ProjectUnlimited Growth? A Comparative Analysis of Causes and Consequences of Policy Accumulation

Researcher (PI)Christoph KNILL

Host Institution (HI)LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryACCUPOL systematically analyzes an intuitively well-known, but curiously under-researched phenomenon: policy accumulation. Societal modernization and progress bring about a continuously growing pile of policies in most political systems. At the same time, however, the administrative capacities for implementation are largely stagnant. While being societally desirable in principle, ever-more policies hence may potentially imply less in terms of policy achievements. Whether or not policy accumulation remains at a ‘sustainable’ rate thus crucially affects the long-term output legitimacy of modern democracies.
Given this development, the central focus of ACCUPOL lies on three questions: Do accumulation rates vary across countries and policy sectors? Which factors mitigate policy accumulation? And to what extent is policy accumulation really associated with an increasing prevalence of implementation deficits? In answering these questions, ACCUPOL radically departs from established research traditions in public policy.
First, the project develops new analytical concepts: Rather than relying on individual policy change as the unit of analysis, we consider policy accumulation to assess the growth of policy portfolios over time. In terms of implementation, ACCUPOL takes into account the overall prevalence of implementation deficits in a given sector instead of analyzing the effectiveness of individual implementation processes.
Second, this analytical innovation also implies a paradigmatic theoretical shift. Because existing theories focus on the analysis of individual policies, they are of limited help to understand causes and consequences of policy accumulation. ACCUPOL develops a novel theoretical approach to fill this theoretical gap.
Third, the project provides new empirical evidence on the prevalence of policy accumulation and implementation deficits focusing on 25 OECD countries and two key policy areas (social and environmental policy).

ACCUPOL systematically analyzes an intuitively well-known, but curiously under-researched phenomenon: policy accumulation. Societal modernization and progress bring about a continuously growing pile of policies in most political systems. At the same time, however, the administrative capacities for implementation are largely stagnant. While being societally desirable in principle, ever-more policies hence may potentially imply less in terms of policy achievements. Whether or not policy accumulation remains at a ‘sustainable’ rate thus crucially affects the long-term output legitimacy of modern democracies.
Given this development, the central focus of ACCUPOL lies on three questions: Do accumulation rates vary across countries and policy sectors? Which factors mitigate policy accumulation? And to what extent is policy accumulation really associated with an increasing prevalence of implementation deficits? In answering these questions, ACCUPOL radically departs from established research traditions in public policy.
First, the project develops new analytical concepts: Rather than relying on individual policy change as the unit of analysis, we consider policy accumulation to assess the growth of policy portfolios over time. In terms of implementation, ACCUPOL takes into account the overall prevalence of implementation deficits in a given sector instead of analyzing the effectiveness of individual implementation processes.
Second, this analytical innovation also implies a paradigmatic theoretical shift. Because existing theories focus on the analysis of individual policies, they are of limited help to understand causes and consequences of policy accumulation. ACCUPOL develops a novel theoretical approach to fill this theoretical gap.
Third, the project provides new empirical evidence on the prevalence of policy accumulation and implementation deficits focusing on 25 OECD countries and two key policy areas (social and environmental policy).

SummaryOne of the most exciting research questions within archaeology is that of the peopling of Australasia by at least c.50,000 years ago. This represents some of the earliest evidence of modern human colonization outside Africa, yet, even at the greatest sea-level lowstand, this migration would have involved seafaring. It is the maritime nature of this dispersal which makes it so important to questions of technological, cognitive and social human development. These issues have traditionally been the preserve of archaeologists, but with a multidisciplinary approach that embraces cutting-edge marine geophysical, hydrodynamic and archaeogenetic analyses, we now have the opportunity to examine the When, Where, Who and How of the earliest seafaring in world history.
The voyage from Sunda (South East Asia) to Sahul (Australasia) provides evidence for the earliest ‘open water’ crossing in the world. A combination of the sparse number of early archaeological finds and the significant changes in the palaeolandscape and submergence of the broad north western Australian continental shelf, mean that little is known about the routes taken and what these crossings may have entailed.
This project will combine research of the submerged palaeolandscape of the continental shelf to refine our knowledge of the onshore/offshore environment, identify potential submerged prehistoric sites and enhance our understanding of the palaeoshoreline and tidal regime. This will be combined with archaeogenetic research targeting mtDNA and Y-chromosome data to resolve questions of demography and dating.
For the first time this project takes a truly multidisciplinary approach to address the colonization of Sahul, providing an unique opportunity to tackle some of the most important questions about human origins, the relationship between humans and the changing environment, population dynamics and migration, seafaring technology, social organisation and cognition.

One of the most exciting research questions within archaeology is that of the peopling of Australasia by at least c.50,000 years ago. This represents some of the earliest evidence of modern human colonization outside Africa, yet, even at the greatest sea-level lowstand, this migration would have involved seafaring. It is the maritime nature of this dispersal which makes it so important to questions of technological, cognitive and social human development. These issues have traditionally been the preserve of archaeologists, but with a multidisciplinary approach that embraces cutting-edge marine geophysical, hydrodynamic and archaeogenetic analyses, we now have the opportunity to examine the When, Where, Who and How of the earliest seafaring in world history.
The voyage from Sunda (South East Asia) to Sahul (Australasia) provides evidence for the earliest ‘open water’ crossing in the world. A combination of the sparse number of early archaeological finds and the significant changes in the palaeolandscape and submergence of the broad north western Australian continental shelf, mean that little is known about the routes taken and what these crossings may have entailed.
This project will combine research of the submerged palaeolandscape of the continental shelf to refine our knowledge of the onshore/offshore environment, identify potential submerged prehistoric sites and enhance our understanding of the palaeoshoreline and tidal regime. This will be combined with archaeogenetic research targeting mtDNA and Y-chromosome data to resolve questions of demography and dating.
For the first time this project takes a truly multidisciplinary approach to address the colonization of Sahul, providing an unique opportunity to tackle some of the most important questions about human origins, the relationship between humans and the changing environment, population dynamics and migration, seafaring technology, social organisation and cognition.

Max ERC Funding

1 134 928 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31

Project acronymAfricanWomen

ProjectWomen in Africa

Researcher (PI)catherine GUIRKINGER

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITE DE NAMUR ASBL

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryRates of domestic violence and the relative risk of premature death for women are higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region. Yet we know remarkably little about the economic forces, incentives and constraints that drive discrimination against women in this region, making it hard to identify policy levers to address the problem. This project will help fill this gap.
I will investigate gender discrimination from two complementary perspectives. First, through the lens of economic history, I will investigate the forces driving trends in women’s relative well-being since slavery. To quantify the evolution of well-being of sub-Saharan women relative to men, I will use three types of historical data: anthropometric indicators (relative height), vital statistics (to compute numbers of missing women), and outcomes of formal and informal family law disputes. I will then investigate how major economic developments and changes in family laws differentially affected women’s welfare across ethnic groups with different norms on women’s roles and rights.
Second, using intra-household economic models, I will provide new insights into domestic violence and gender bias in access to crucial resources in present-day Africa. I will develop a new household model that incorporates gender identity and endogenous outside options to explore the relationship between women’s empowerment and the use of violence. Using the notion of strategic delegation, I will propose a new rationale for the separation of budgets often observed in African households and generate predictions of how improvements in women’s outside options affect welfare. Finally, with first hand data, I will investigate intra-household differences in nutrition and work effort in times of food shortage from the points of view of efficiency and equity. I will use activity trackers as an innovative means of collecting high quality data on work effort and thus overcome data limitations restricting the existing literature

Rates of domestic violence and the relative risk of premature death for women are higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in any other region. Yet we know remarkably little about the economic forces, incentives and constraints that drive discrimination against women in this region, making it hard to identify policy levers to address the problem. This project will help fill this gap.
I will investigate gender discrimination from two complementary perspectives. First, through the lens of economic history, I will investigate the forces driving trends in women’s relative well-being since slavery. To quantify the evolution of well-being of sub-Saharan women relative to men, I will use three types of historical data: anthropometric indicators (relative height), vital statistics (to compute numbers of missing women), and outcomes of formal and informal family law disputes. I will then investigate how major economic developments and changes in family laws differentially affected women’s welfare across ethnic groups with different norms on women’s roles and rights.
Second, using intra-household economic models, I will provide new insights into domestic violence and gender bias in access to crucial resources in present-day Africa. I will develop a new household model that incorporates gender identity and endogenous outside options to explore the relationship between women’s empowerment and the use of violence. Using the notion of strategic delegation, I will propose a new rationale for the separation of budgets often observed in African households and generate predictions of how improvements in women’s outside options affect welfare. Finally, with first hand data, I will investigate intra-household differences in nutrition and work effort in times of food shortage from the points of view of efficiency and equity. I will use activity trackers as an innovative means of collecting high quality data on work effort and thus overcome data limitations restricting the existing literature

Max ERC Funding

1 499 313 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-08-01, End date: 2023-07-31

Project acronymAftermath

ProjectTHE AFTERMATH OF THE EAST ASIAN WAR OF 1592-1598.

Researcher (PI)Rebekah CLEMENTS

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryAftermath seeks to understand the legacy of the East Asian War of 1592-1598. This conflict involved over 500,000 combatants from Japan, China, and Korea; up to 100,000 Korean civilians were abducted to Japan. The war caused momentous demographic upheaval and widespread destruction, but also had long-lasting cultural impact as a result of the removal to Japan of Korean technology and skilled labourers. The conflict and its aftermath bear striking parallels to events in East Asia during World War 2, and memories of the 16th century war remain deeply resonant in the region. However, the war and its immediate aftermath are also significant because they occurred at the juncture of periods often characterized as “medieval” and “early modern” in the East Asian case. What were the implications for the social, economic, and cultural contours of early modern East Asia? What can this conflict tell us about war “aftermath” across historical periods and about such periodization itself? There is little Western scholarship on the war and few studies in any language cross linguistic, disciplinary, and national boundaries to achieve a regional perspective that reflects the interconnected history of East Asia. Aftermath will radically alter our understanding of the region’s history by providing the first analysis of the state of East Asia as a result of the war. The focus will be on the period up to the middle of the 17th century, but not precluding ongoing effects. The team, with expertise covering Japan, Korea, and China, will investigate three themes: the movement of people and demographic change, the impact on the natural environment, and technological diffusion. The project will be the first large scale investigation to use Japanese, Korean, and Chinese sources to understand the war’s aftermath. It will broaden understandings of the early modern world, and push the boundaries of war legacy studies by exploring the meanings of “aftermath” in the early modern East Asian context.

Aftermath seeks to understand the legacy of the East Asian War of 1592-1598. This conflict involved over 500,000 combatants from Japan, China, and Korea; up to 100,000 Korean civilians were abducted to Japan. The war caused momentous demographic upheaval and widespread destruction, but also had long-lasting cultural impact as a result of the removal to Japan of Korean technology and skilled labourers. The conflict and its aftermath bear striking parallels to events in East Asia during World War 2, and memories of the 16th century war remain deeply resonant in the region. However, the war and its immediate aftermath are also significant because they occurred at the juncture of periods often characterized as “medieval” and “early modern” in the East Asian case. What were the implications for the social, economic, and cultural contours of early modern East Asia? What can this conflict tell us about war “aftermath” across historical periods and about such periodization itself? There is little Western scholarship on the war and few studies in any language cross linguistic, disciplinary, and national boundaries to achieve a regional perspective that reflects the interconnected history of East Asia. Aftermath will radically alter our understanding of the region’s history by providing the first analysis of the state of East Asia as a result of the war. The focus will be on the period up to the middle of the 17th century, but not precluding ongoing effects. The team, with expertise covering Japan, Korea, and China, will investigate three themes: the movement of people and demographic change, the impact on the natural environment, and technological diffusion. The project will be the first large scale investigation to use Japanese, Korean, and Chinese sources to understand the war’s aftermath. It will broaden understandings of the early modern world, and push the boundaries of war legacy studies by exploring the meanings of “aftermath” in the early modern East Asian context.

Max ERC Funding

1 444 980 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-11-01, End date: 2023-10-31

Project acronymAMBH

ProjectAncient Music Beyond Hellenisation

Researcher (PI)Stefan HAGEL

Host Institution (HI)OESTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryFrom medieval times, Arabic as well as European music was analysed in terms that were inherited from Classical Antiquity and had thus developed in a very different music culture. In spite of recent breakthroughs in the understanding of the latter, whose technicalities we access not only through texts and iconography, but also through instrument finds and surviving notated melodies, its relation to music traditions known from later periods and different places is almost uncharted territory.
The present project explores relations between Hellenic/Hellenistic music as pervaded the theatres and concert halls throughout and beyond the Roman empire, Near Eastern traditions – from the diatonic system emerging from cuneiform sources to the flourishing musical world of the caliphates – and, as far as possible, African musical life south of Egypt as well – a region that maintained close ties both with the Hellenised culture of its northern neighbours and with the Arabian Peninsula.
On the one hand, this demands collaboration between Classical Philology and Arabic Studies, extending methods recently developed within music archaeological research related to the Classical Mediterranean. Arabic writings need to be examined in close reading, using recent insights into the interplay between ancient music theory and practice, in order to segregate the influence of Greek thinking from ideas and facts that must relate to contemporaneous ‘Arabic’ music-making. In this way we hope better to define the relation of this tradition to the ‘Classical world’, potentially breaking free of Orientalising bias informing modern views. On the other hand, the study and reconstruction, virtual and material, of wind instruments of Hellenistic pedigree but found outside the confinements of the Hellenistic ‘heartlands’ may provide evidence of ‘foreign’ tonality employed in those regions – specifically the royal city of Meroë in modern Sudan and the Oxus Temple in modern Tajikistan.

From medieval times, Arabic as well as European music was analysed in terms that were inherited from Classical Antiquity and had thus developed in a very different music culture. In spite of recent breakthroughs in the understanding of the latter, whose technicalities we access not only through texts and iconography, but also through instrument finds and surviving notated melodies, its relation to music traditions known from later periods and different places is almost uncharted territory.
The present project explores relations between Hellenic/Hellenistic music as pervaded the theatres and concert halls throughout and beyond the Roman empire, Near Eastern traditions – from the diatonic system emerging from cuneiform sources to the flourishing musical world of the caliphates – and, as far as possible, African musical life south of Egypt as well – a region that maintained close ties both with the Hellenised culture of its northern neighbours and with the Arabian Peninsula.
On the one hand, this demands collaboration between Classical Philology and Arabic Studies, extending methods recently developed within music archaeological research related to the Classical Mediterranean. Arabic writings need to be examined in close reading, using recent insights into the interplay between ancient music theory and practice, in order to segregate the influence of Greek thinking from ideas and facts that must relate to contemporaneous ‘Arabic’ music-making. In this way we hope better to define the relation of this tradition to the ‘Classical world’, potentially breaking free of Orientalising bias informing modern views. On the other hand, the study and reconstruction, virtual and material, of wind instruments of Hellenistic pedigree but found outside the confinements of the Hellenistic ‘heartlands’ may provide evidence of ‘foreign’ tonality employed in those regions – specifically the royal city of Meroë in modern Sudan and the Oxus Temple in modern Tajikistan.

Max ERC Funding

775 959 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Project acronymAPMPAL-HET

ProjectAsset Prices and Macro Policy when Agents Learn and are Heterogeneous

SummaryBased on the APMPAL (ERC) project we continue to develop the frameworks of internal rationality (IR) and optimal signal extraction (OSE). Under IR investors/consumers behave rationally given their subjective beliefs about prices, these beliefs are compatible with data. Under OSE the government has partial information, it knows how policy influences observed variables and signal extraction.
We develop further the foundations of IR and OSE with an emphasis on heterogeneous agents. We study sovereign bond crisis and heterogeneity of beliefs in asset pricing models under IR, using survey data on expectations. Under IR the assets’ stochastic discount factor depends on the agents’ decision function and beliefs; this modifies some key asset pricing results. We extend OSE to models with state variables, forward-looking constraints and heterogeneity.
Under IR agents’ prior beliefs determine the effects of a policy reform. If the government does not observe prior beliefs it has partial information, thus OSE should be used to analyse policy reforms under IR.
If IR heterogeneous workers forecast their productivity either from their own wage or their neighbours’ in a network, low current wages discourage search and human capital accumulation, leading to low productivity. This can explain low development of a country or social exclusion of a group. Worker subsidies redistribute wealth and can increase productivity if they “teach” agents to exit a low-wage state.
We build DSGE models under IR for prediction and policy analysis. We develop time-series tools for predicting macro and asset market variables, using information available to the analyst, and we introduce non-linearities and survey expectations using insights from models under IR.
We study how IR and OSE change the view on macro policy issues such as tax smoothing, debt management, Taylor rule, level of inflation, fiscal/monetary policy coordination, factor taxation or redistribution.

Based on the APMPAL (ERC) project we continue to develop the frameworks of internal rationality (IR) and optimal signal extraction (OSE). Under IR investors/consumers behave rationally given their subjective beliefs about prices, these beliefs are compatible with data. Under OSE the government has partial information, it knows how policy influences observed variables and signal extraction.
We develop further the foundations of IR and OSE with an emphasis on heterogeneous agents. We study sovereign bond crisis and heterogeneity of beliefs in asset pricing models under IR, using survey data on expectations. Under IR the assets’ stochastic discount factor depends on the agents’ decision function and beliefs; this modifies some key asset pricing results. We extend OSE to models with state variables, forward-looking constraints and heterogeneity.
Under IR agents’ prior beliefs determine the effects of a policy reform. If the government does not observe prior beliefs it has partial information, thus OSE should be used to analyse policy reforms under IR.
If IR heterogeneous workers forecast their productivity either from their own wage or their neighbours’ in a network, low current wages discourage search and human capital accumulation, leading to low productivity. This can explain low development of a country or social exclusion of a group. Worker subsidies redistribute wealth and can increase productivity if they “teach” agents to exit a low-wage state.
We build DSGE models under IR for prediction and policy analysis. We develop time-series tools for predicting macro and asset market variables, using information available to the analyst, and we introduce non-linearities and survey expectations using insights from models under IR.
We study how IR and OSE change the view on macro policy issues such as tax smoothing, debt management, Taylor rule, level of inflation, fiscal/monetary policy coordination, factor taxation or redistribution.

Max ERC Funding

1 524 144 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Project acronymArsNova

ProjectEuropean Ars Nova: Multilingual Poetry and Polyphonic Song in the Late Middle Ages

Researcher (PI)Maria Sofia LANNUTTI

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI FIRENZE

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryDante Alighieri at the dawn of the 1300s, as well as Eustache Deschamps almost a century later, conceived poetry as music in itself. But what happens with poetry when it is involved in the complex architecture of polyphony? The aim of this project is to study for the first time the corpus of 14th- and early 15th-century poetry set to music by Ars Nova polyphonists (more than 1200 texts). This repertoire gathers different poetic and musical traditions, as shown by the multilingual anthologies copied during the last years of the Schism. The choice of this corpus is motivated by two primary goals: a) to offer a new interpretation of its meaning and function in the cultural and historical context, one that may be then applied to the rest of coeval European lyric poetry; b) to overcome current disciplinary divisions in order to generate a new methodological balance between the project’s two main fields of interest (Comparative Literature / Musicology). Most Ars Nova polyphonists were directly associated with religious institutions. In many texts, the language of courtly love expresses the values of caritas, the theological virtue that guides wise rulers and leads them to desire the common good. Thus, the poetic figure of the lover becomes a metaphor for the political man, and love poetry can be used as a device for diplomacy, as well as for personal and institutional propaganda. From this unprecedented point of view, the project will develop three research lines in response to the following questions: 1) How is the relationship between poetry and music, and how is the dialogue between the different poetic and musical traditions viewed in relation to each context of production? 2) To what extent does Ars Nova poetry take part in the ‘soft power’ strategies exercised by the entire European political class of the time? 3) Is there a connection between the multilingualism of the manuscript tradition and the perception of the Ars Nova as a European, intercultural repertoire?

Dante Alighieri at the dawn of the 1300s, as well as Eustache Deschamps almost a century later, conceived poetry as music in itself. But what happens with poetry when it is involved in the complex architecture of polyphony? The aim of this project is to study for the first time the corpus of 14th- and early 15th-century poetry set to music by Ars Nova polyphonists (more than 1200 texts). This repertoire gathers different poetic and musical traditions, as shown by the multilingual anthologies copied during the last years of the Schism. The choice of this corpus is motivated by two primary goals: a) to offer a new interpretation of its meaning and function in the cultural and historical context, one that may be then applied to the rest of coeval European lyric poetry; b) to overcome current disciplinary divisions in order to generate a new methodological balance between the project’s two main fields of interest (Comparative Literature / Musicology). Most Ars Nova polyphonists were directly associated with religious institutions. In many texts, the language of courtly love expresses the values of caritas, the theological virtue that guides wise rulers and leads them to desire the common good. Thus, the poetic figure of the lover becomes a metaphor for the political man, and love poetry can be used as a device for diplomacy, as well as for personal and institutional propaganda. From this unprecedented point of view, the project will develop three research lines in response to the following questions: 1) How is the relationship between poetry and music, and how is the dialogue between the different poetic and musical traditions viewed in relation to each context of production? 2) To what extent does Ars Nova poetry take part in the ‘soft power’ strategies exercised by the entire European political class of the time? 3) Is there a connection between the multilingualism of the manuscript tradition and the perception of the Ars Nova as a European, intercultural repertoire?

Max ERC Funding

2 193 375 €

Duration

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

Project acronymARTSOUNDSCAPES

ProjectThe sound of special places: exploring rock art soundscapes and the sacred

Researcher (PI)A. Margarita DIAZ-ANDREU

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH6, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryThe ARTSOUNDSCAPES project deals with sound, rock art and sacred landscapes among past hunter-gatherers and early agricultural societies around the world. The potential of sound to stimulate powerful emotions makes it a common medium for conferring places with extraordinary agency. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources indicate that these sites are often endowed with a sacred significance and, in many cases, they also receive special treatment, including the production of rock paintings. Despite the aural experience being an integral component of the human condition and a key element in ritual, archaeology has largely been unable to study it systematically. Rock art landscapes are no exception and, although some studies have been made, they have largely been reproached for their lack of scientific rigour and subjectivity. ARTSOUNDSCAPES will fully address this weakness by investigating the perception of sound in rock art landscapes from an interdisciplinary approach. Borrowing methods developed in acoustic engineering, the project will assess, from an objective and quantitative perspective, the acoustic properties of rock art landscapes in selected areas around the world: the Western/Central Mediterranean in Europe, Siberia in Asia, and Baja California in North America. Human experiences associated with altered or mystical states invoked by the identified special sonic characteristics of these landscapes will be further tested by exploring the psychoacoustic effects these soundscapes have on people and their neural correlate to brain activity. The project will also thoroughly survey ethnographic attitudes to sacred soundscapes based on both current premodern societies and ethnohistorical sources. The groundbreaking combination of this array of interdisciplinary approaches will facilitate the ultimate aim of the project: to propose a phenomenological understanding of sacred soundscapes among late hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists around the world.

The ARTSOUNDSCAPES project deals with sound, rock art and sacred landscapes among past hunter-gatherers and early agricultural societies around the world. The potential of sound to stimulate powerful emotions makes it a common medium for conferring places with extraordinary agency. Ethnographic and ethnohistorical sources indicate that these sites are often endowed with a sacred significance and, in many cases, they also receive special treatment, including the production of rock paintings. Despite the aural experience being an integral component of the human condition and a key element in ritual, archaeology has largely been unable to study it systematically. Rock art landscapes are no exception and, although some studies have been made, they have largely been reproached for their lack of scientific rigour and subjectivity. ARTSOUNDSCAPES will fully address this weakness by investigating the perception of sound in rock art landscapes from an interdisciplinary approach. Borrowing methods developed in acoustic engineering, the project will assess, from an objective and quantitative perspective, the acoustic properties of rock art landscapes in selected areas around the world: the Western/Central Mediterranean in Europe, Siberia in Asia, and Baja California in North America. Human experiences associated with altered or mystical states invoked by the identified special sonic characteristics of these landscapes will be further tested by exploring the psychoacoustic effects these soundscapes have on people and their neural correlate to brain activity. The project will also thoroughly survey ethnographic attitudes to sacred soundscapes based on both current premodern societies and ethnohistorical sources. The groundbreaking combination of this array of interdisciplinary approaches will facilitate the ultimate aim of the project: to propose a phenomenological understanding of sacred soundscapes among late hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists around the world.

Max ERC Funding

2 239 375 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-10-01, End date: 2023-09-30

Project acronymASA

ProjectUnderstanding Statehood through Architecture: a comparative study of Africa's state buildings

Researcher (PI)Julia Catherine GALLAGHER

Host Institution (HI)SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES ROYAL CHARTER

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryThe project will develop a new ethnography of statehood through architecture. It goes beyond conventional approaches to statehood, which describe states as an objectively existing set of tools used to run a country, and critical approaches that understand them as discursive constructs. Instead, this research understands statehood as a result of the relationship between functions and symbols, and will read it through an innovative new methodology, namely a study of state architecture.
The study will focus on state buildings in Africa. African statehood, uncertain and often ambiguous, in many cases profoundly shaped by colonial heritages and post-colonial relationships, is reflected in classical-colonial, modernist-nationalist and post-modern or vernacular styles of architecture. African state buildings reveal the complex interplay of ideas, activities and relationships that together constitute an often uncomfortable statehood. They symbolise the state, embodying and projecting ideas of it through their aesthetics; they enable its concrete functions and processes; and they reveal what citizens think about the state in the ways they describe and negotiate them.
The study is comparative, multi-layered and interdisciplinary. It focuses on seven countries (South Africa, Tanzania, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea Bissau), exploring politics and statehood on domestic, regional and international levels, and drawing on theory and methods from political science, history, sociology, art and architecture theory. It employs innovative ethnographic methods, including the collection and display of photographs in interactive exhibitions staged in Africa to explore the ways citizens think about and use state buildings.
This project will provide an innovative reading of how African statehood is expressed and how it looks and feels to African citizens. In doing this, it will make a distinctive new contribution to understanding how statehood works everywhere.

The project will develop a new ethnography of statehood through architecture. It goes beyond conventional approaches to statehood, which describe states as an objectively existing set of tools used to run a country, and critical approaches that understand them as discursive constructs. Instead, this research understands statehood as a result of the relationship between functions and symbols, and will read it through an innovative new methodology, namely a study of state architecture.
The study will focus on state buildings in Africa. African statehood, uncertain and often ambiguous, in many cases profoundly shaped by colonial heritages and post-colonial relationships, is reflected in classical-colonial, modernist-nationalist and post-modern or vernacular styles of architecture. African state buildings reveal the complex interplay of ideas, activities and relationships that together constitute an often uncomfortable statehood. They symbolise the state, embodying and projecting ideas of it through their aesthetics; they enable its concrete functions and processes; and they reveal what citizens think about the state in the ways they describe and negotiate them.
The study is comparative, multi-layered and interdisciplinary. It focuses on seven countries (South Africa, Tanzania, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea Bissau), exploring politics and statehood on domestic, regional and international levels, and drawing on theory and methods from political science, history, sociology, art and architecture theory. It employs innovative ethnographic methods, including the collection and display of photographs in interactive exhibitions staged in Africa to explore the ways citizens think about and use state buildings.
This project will provide an innovative reading of how African statehood is expressed and how it looks and feels to African citizens. In doing this, it will make a distinctive new contribution to understanding how statehood works everywhere.

Max ERC Funding

1 870 665 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Project acronymASIAPAST

ProjectFrom herds to empire: Biomolecular and zooarchaeological investigations of mobile pastoralism in the ancient Eurasian steppe

Researcher (PI)Cheryl Ann Makarewicz

Host Institution (HI)CHRISTIAN-ALBRECHTS-UNIVERSITAET ZU KIEL

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH6, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryThe emergence of mobile pastoralism in the Eurasian steppe five thousand years ago marked a unique transformation in human lifeways where, for the first time, people relied almost exclusively on herd animals of sheep, goat, cattle, and horses for sustenance and as symbols. Mobile pastoralism also generated altogether new forms of socio-political organization exceptional to the steppe that ultimately laid the foundation for nomadic states and empires. However, there remain striking gaps in our knowledge of how the pastoralist niche spread and evolved across Eurasia in the past and influenced cultural trajectories that frame the human-herd systems of today. Little is known about the scale of pastoralist movements connected with the initial translocation of domesticated animals, how mobility became embedded in pastoralist life, or how movement contributed to the formation of sophisticated political networks. There is a poor understanding of the character of herd animal husbandry strategies that were central to pastoralist subsistence and how these co-evolved alongside pastoralist dietary intake and ritual use of herd animals. We have a remarkably poor understanding of what pastoralists ate, especially the dietary contribution of dairy products - the quintessential dietary cornerstone food of pastoralist societies.
ASIAPAST addresses these gaps through a biomolecular approach that recovers the dietary and mobility histories of pastoralists and their animals recorded in bones, teeth, and pottery. This project pairs these methods to detailed analyses of the economic and symbolic use of herd animals preserved in zooarchaeological archives. These investigations draw from materials obtained from key sites that capture the transition to mobile pastoralism, its intensification, and emergence of trans-regional political structures located across the culturally connected regions of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

The emergence of mobile pastoralism in the Eurasian steppe five thousand years ago marked a unique transformation in human lifeways where, for the first time, people relied almost exclusively on herd animals of sheep, goat, cattle, and horses for sustenance and as symbols. Mobile pastoralism also generated altogether new forms of socio-political organization exceptional to the steppe that ultimately laid the foundation for nomadic states and empires. However, there remain striking gaps in our knowledge of how the pastoralist niche spread and evolved across Eurasia in the past and influenced cultural trajectories that frame the human-herd systems of today. Little is known about the scale of pastoralist movements connected with the initial translocation of domesticated animals, how mobility became embedded in pastoralist life, or how movement contributed to the formation of sophisticated political networks. There is a poor understanding of the character of herd animal husbandry strategies that were central to pastoralist subsistence and how these co-evolved alongside pastoralist dietary intake and ritual use of herd animals. We have a remarkably poor understanding of what pastoralists ate, especially the dietary contribution of dairy products - the quintessential dietary cornerstone food of pastoralist societies.
ASIAPAST addresses these gaps through a biomolecular approach that recovers the dietary and mobility histories of pastoralists and their animals recorded in bones, teeth, and pottery. This project pairs these methods to detailed analyses of the economic and symbolic use of herd animals preserved in zooarchaeological archives. These investigations draw from materials obtained from key sites that capture the transition to mobile pastoralism, its intensification, and emergence of trans-regional political structures located across the culturally connected regions of Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.

SummaryThroughout history, what has been causing tremendous suffering is groups of people fighting each other. While behavioral science research has advanced our understanding of such intergroup conflict, it has exclusively focused on micro-level processes within and between groups at conflict. Disciplines that employ a more historical perspective like climate studies or political geography report that macro-level pressures due to changes in climate or economic scarcity can go along with social unrest and wars. How do these macro-level pressures relate to micro-level processes? Do they both occur independently, or do macro-level pressures trigger micro-level processes that cause intergroup conflict? And if so, which micro-level processes are triggered, and how?
With unavoidable signs of climate change and increasing resource scarcities, answers to these questions are urgently needed. Here I propose carrying-capacity stress (CCS) as the missing link between macro-level pressures and micro-level processes. A group experiences CCS when its resources do not suffice to maintain its functionality. CCS is a function of macro-level pressures and creates intergroup conflict because it impacts micro-level motivation to contribute to one’s group’s fighting capacity and shapes the coordination of individual contributions to out-group aggression through emergent norms, communication and leadership.
To test these propositions I develop a parametric model of CCS that is amenable to measurement and experimentation, and use techniques used in my work on conflict and cooperation: Meta-analyses and time-series analysis of macro-level historical data; experiments on intergroup conflict; and measurement of neuro-hormonal correlates of cooperation and conflict. In combination, this project provides novel multi-level conflict theory that integrates macro-level discoveries in climate research and political geography with micro-level processes uncovered in the biobehavioral sciences

Throughout history, what has been causing tremendous suffering is groups of people fighting each other. While behavioral science research has advanced our understanding of such intergroup conflict, it has exclusively focused on micro-level processes within and between groups at conflict. Disciplines that employ a more historical perspective like climate studies or political geography report that macro-level pressures due to changes in climate or economic scarcity can go along with social unrest and wars. How do these macro-level pressures relate to micro-level processes? Do they both occur independently, or do macro-level pressures trigger micro-level processes that cause intergroup conflict? And if so, which micro-level processes are triggered, and how?
With unavoidable signs of climate change and increasing resource scarcities, answers to these questions are urgently needed. Here I propose carrying-capacity stress (CCS) as the missing link between macro-level pressures and micro-level processes. A group experiences CCS when its resources do not suffice to maintain its functionality. CCS is a function of macro-level pressures and creates intergroup conflict because it impacts micro-level motivation to contribute to one’s group’s fighting capacity and shapes the coordination of individual contributions to out-group aggression through emergent norms, communication and leadership.
To test these propositions I develop a parametric model of CCS that is amenable to measurement and experimentation, and use techniques used in my work on conflict and cooperation: Meta-analyses and time-series analysis of macro-level historical data; experiments on intergroup conflict; and measurement of neuro-hormonal correlates of cooperation and conflict. In combination, this project provides novel multi-level conflict theory that integrates macro-level discoveries in climate research and political geography with micro-level processes uncovered in the biobehavioral sciences

Max ERC Funding

2 490 383 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-08-01, End date: 2023-07-31

Project acronymAUTISMS

ProjectDecomposing Heterogeneity in Autism Spectrum Disorders

Researcher (PI)Michael LOMBARDO

Host Institution (HI)FONDAZIONE ISTITUTO ITALIANO DI TECNOLOGIA

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryAutism spectrum disorders (ASD) affect 1-2% of the population and are a major public health issue. Heterogeneity between affected ASD individuals is substantial both at clinical and etiological levels, thus warranting the idea that we should begin characterizing the ASD population as multiple kinds of ‘autisms’. Without an advanced understanding of how heterogeneity manifests in ASD, it is likely that we will not make pronounced progress towards translational research goals that can have real impact on patient’s lives. This research program is focused on decomposing heterogeneity in ASD at multiple levels of analysis. Using multiple ‘big data’ resources that are both ‘broad’ (large sample size) and ‘deep’ (multiple levels of analysis measured within each individual), I will examine how known variables such as sex, early language development, early social preferences, and early intervention treatment response may be important stratification variables that differentiate ASD subgroups at phenotypic, neural systems/circuits, and genomic levels of analysis. In addition to examining known stratification variables, this research program will engage in data-driven discovery via application of advanced unsupervised computational techniques that can highlight novel multivariate distinctions in the data that signal important ASD subgroups. These data-driven approaches may hold promise for discovering novel ASD subgroups at biological and phenotypic levels of analysis that may be valuable for prioritization in future work developing personalized assessment, monitoring, and treatment strategies for subsets of the ASD population. By enhancing the precision of our understanding about multiple subtypes of ASD this work will help accelerate progress towards the ideals of personalized medicine and help to reduce the burden of ASD on individuals, families, and society.

Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) affect 1-2% of the population and are a major public health issue. Heterogeneity between affected ASD individuals is substantial both at clinical and etiological levels, thus warranting the idea that we should begin characterizing the ASD population as multiple kinds of ‘autisms’. Without an advanced understanding of how heterogeneity manifests in ASD, it is likely that we will not make pronounced progress towards translational research goals that can have real impact on patient’s lives. This research program is focused on decomposing heterogeneity in ASD at multiple levels of analysis. Using multiple ‘big data’ resources that are both ‘broad’ (large sample size) and ‘deep’ (multiple levels of analysis measured within each individual), I will examine how known variables such as sex, early language development, early social preferences, and early intervention treatment response may be important stratification variables that differentiate ASD subgroups at phenotypic, neural systems/circuits, and genomic levels of analysis. In addition to examining known stratification variables, this research program will engage in data-driven discovery via application of advanced unsupervised computational techniques that can highlight novel multivariate distinctions in the data that signal important ASD subgroups. These data-driven approaches may hold promise for discovering novel ASD subgroups at biological and phenotypic levels of analysis that may be valuable for prioritization in future work developing personalized assessment, monitoring, and treatment strategies for subsets of the ASD population. By enhancing the precision of our understanding about multiple subtypes of ASD this work will help accelerate progress towards the ideals of personalized medicine and help to reduce the burden of ASD on individuals, families, and society.

Max ERC Funding

1 499 444 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31

Project acronymBabyRhythm

ProjectTuned to the Rhythm: How Prenatally and Postnatally Heard Speech Prosody Lays the Foundations for Language Learning

SummaryThe role of experience in language acquisition has been the focus of heated theoretical debates, between proponents of nativist views according to whom experience plays a minimal role and advocates of empiricist positions holding that experience, be it linguistic, social or other, is sufficient to account for language acquisition. Despite more than a half century of dedicated research efforts, the problem is not solved.
The present project brings a novel perspective to this debate, combining hitherto unconnected research in language acquisition with recent advances in the neurophysiology of hearing and speech processing. Specifically, it claims that prenatal experience with speech, which mainly consists of prosody due to the filtering effects of the womb, is what shapes the speech perception system, laying the foundations of subsequent language learning. Prosody is thus the cue that links genetically endowed predispositions present in the initial state with language experience. The proposal links the behavioral and neural levels, arguing that the hierarchy of the neural oscillations corresponds to a unique developmental chronology in human infants’ experience with speech and language.
The project uses state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, EEG & NIRS, with monolingual full term newborns, as well as full-term bilingual, preterm and deaf newborns to investigate the link between prenatal experience and subsequent language acquisition. It proposes to follow the developmental trajectories of these four populations from birth to 6 and 9 months of age.

The role of experience in language acquisition has been the focus of heated theoretical debates, between proponents of nativist views according to whom experience plays a minimal role and advocates of empiricist positions holding that experience, be it linguistic, social or other, is sufficient to account for language acquisition. Despite more than a half century of dedicated research efforts, the problem is not solved.
The present project brings a novel perspective to this debate, combining hitherto unconnected research in language acquisition with recent advances in the neurophysiology of hearing and speech processing. Specifically, it claims that prenatal experience with speech, which mainly consists of prosody due to the filtering effects of the womb, is what shapes the speech perception system, laying the foundations of subsequent language learning. Prosody is thus the cue that links genetically endowed predispositions present in the initial state with language experience. The proposal links the behavioral and neural levels, arguing that the hierarchy of the neural oscillations corresponds to a unique developmental chronology in human infants’ experience with speech and language.
The project uses state-of-the-art brain imaging techniques, EEG & NIRS, with monolingual full term newborns, as well as full-term bilingual, preterm and deaf newborns to investigate the link between prenatal experience and subsequent language acquisition. It proposes to follow the developmental trajectories of these four populations from birth to 6 and 9 months of age.

Max ERC Funding

1 621 250 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31

Project acronymBANK-LASH

ProjectBanks, Popular Backlash, and the Post-Crisis Politics of Financial Regulation

Researcher (PI)Pepper CULPEPPER

Host Institution (HI)THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryDriven by public outrage at bank bailouts during the financial crisis, many governments have since then tried to rewrite the rules governing finance. Yet the anger provoked by the bailouts has not subsided. In Europe and in North America, citizen fury against bankers continues to structure battles over financial regulation. It also affects broader perceptions of fairness in the political system and feeds anti-elite populism. Scholars of political economy have chronicled the clashes between states and large banks, and scholars of political behaviour have noted the failings of governments to respond to the will of democratic majorities. No one has explored the feedback loops between policies regulating banks, the public anger towards banking elites, and media discussions of finance. BANK-LASH fills this gap, using a cutting-edge, high-risk research design comprising three work packages to link policy outcomes with public opinion and media coverage. BANK-LASH 1will collect the first cross-nationally comparable data on public attitudes towards finance, including a series of innovative survey experiments that assess how different media frames affect emotions and preferences. BANK-LASH 2 will use supervised machine learning to measure the overall media environment of these countries for the last decade, assessing how much different national media systems discuss finance and how different national media systems frame the discussion of banking regulation. BANK-LASH 3 links the micro-level study of attitudes and macro-level media coverage with episodes of policy intervention in each country in order to determine when democracies have imposed significant new regulation on their banks. By harnessing these different intellectual tools within a single study, BANK-LASH brings together the concerns of political economy, behavioral research and policy studies to untangle the relationship between banks, public policy, and anti-elite sentiment in the wake of the financial crisis.

Driven by public outrage at bank bailouts during the financial crisis, many governments have since then tried to rewrite the rules governing finance. Yet the anger provoked by the bailouts has not subsided. In Europe and in North America, citizen fury against bankers continues to structure battles over financial regulation. It also affects broader perceptions of fairness in the political system and feeds anti-elite populism. Scholars of political economy have chronicled the clashes between states and large banks, and scholars of political behaviour have noted the failings of governments to respond to the will of democratic majorities. No one has explored the feedback loops between policies regulating banks, the public anger towards banking elites, and media discussions of finance. BANK-LASH fills this gap, using a cutting-edge, high-risk research design comprising three work packages to link policy outcomes with public opinion and media coverage. BANK-LASH 1will collect the first cross-nationally comparable data on public attitudes towards finance, including a series of innovative survey experiments that assess how different media frames affect emotions and preferences. BANK-LASH 2 will use supervised machine learning to measure the overall media environment of these countries for the last decade, assessing how much different national media systems discuss finance and how different national media systems frame the discussion of banking regulation. BANK-LASH 3 links the micro-level study of attitudes and macro-level media coverage with episodes of policy intervention in each country in order to determine when democracies have imposed significant new regulation on their banks. By harnessing these different intellectual tools within a single study, BANK-LASH brings together the concerns of political economy, behavioral research and policy studies to untangle the relationship between banks, public policy, and anti-elite sentiment in the wake of the financial crisis.

SummaryBEHAVFRICTIONS will use novel models focussing on information-processing frictions to explain choice patterns described in behavioral economics and psychology. The proposed research will provide microfoundations that are essential for (i) identification of stable preferences, (ii) counterfactual predictions, and (iii) normative conclusions.
(i) Agents who face information-processing costs must trade the precision of choice against information costs. Their behavior thus reflects both their stable preferences and the context-dependent procedures that manage their errors stemming from imperfect information processing. In the absence of micro-founded models, the two drivers of the behavior are difficult to disentangle for outside observers. In some pillars of the proposal, the agents follow choice rules that closely resemble logit rules used in structural estimation. This will allow me to reinterpret the structural estimation fits to choice data and to make a distinction between the stable preferences and frictions.
(ii) Such a distinction is important in counterfactual policy analysis because the second-best decision procedures that manage the errors in choice are affected by the analysed policy. Incorporation of the information-processing frictions into existing empirical methods will improve our ability to predict effects of the policies.
(iii) My preliminary results suggest that when an agent is prone to committing errors, biases--such as overconfidence, confirmatory bias, or perception biases known from prospect theory--arise under second-best strategies. By providing the link between the agent's environment and the second-best distribution of the perception errors, my models will delineate environments in which these biases shield the agents from the most costly mistakes from environments in which the biases turn into maladaptations. The distinction will inform the normative debate on debiasing.

BEHAVFRICTIONS will use novel models focussing on information-processing frictions to explain choice patterns described in behavioral economics and psychology. The proposed research will provide microfoundations that are essential for (i) identification of stable preferences, (ii) counterfactual predictions, and (iii) normative conclusions.
(i) Agents who face information-processing costs must trade the precision of choice against information costs. Their behavior thus reflects both their stable preferences and the context-dependent procedures that manage their errors stemming from imperfect information processing. In the absence of micro-founded models, the two drivers of the behavior are difficult to disentangle for outside observers. In some pillars of the proposal, the agents follow choice rules that closely resemble logit rules used in structural estimation. This will allow me to reinterpret the structural estimation fits to choice data and to make a distinction between the stable preferences and frictions.
(ii) Such a distinction is important in counterfactual policy analysis because the second-best decision procedures that manage the errors in choice are affected by the analysed policy. Incorporation of the information-processing frictions into existing empirical methods will improve our ability to predict effects of the policies.
(iii) My preliminary results suggest that when an agent is prone to committing errors, biases--such as overconfidence, confirmatory bias, or perception biases known from prospect theory--arise under second-best strategies. By providing the link between the agent's environment and the second-best distribution of the perception errors, my models will delineate environments in which these biases shield the agents from the most costly mistakes from environments in which the biases turn into maladaptations. The distinction will inform the normative debate on debiasing.

Max ERC Funding

1 321 488 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31

Project acronymBETLIV

ProjectReturning to a Better Place: The (Re)assessment of the ‘Good Life’ in Times of Crisis

SummaryWhat makes for a valuable and good life is a question that many people in the contemporary world ask themselves, yet it is one that social science research has seldom addressed. Only recently have scholars started undertaking inductive comparative research on different notions of the ‘good life’, highlighting socio-cultural variations and calling for a better understanding of the different imaginaries, aspirations and values that guide people in their quest for better living conditions. Research is still lacking, however, on how people themselves evaluate, compare, and put into perspective different visions of good living and their socio-cultural anchorage. This project addresses such questions from an anthropological perspective, proposing an innovative study of how ideals of the good life are articulated, (re)assessed, and related to specific places and contexts as a result of the experience of crisis and migration. The case studies chosen to operationalize these lines of enquiry focus on the phenomenon of return migration, and consist in an analysis of the imaginaries and experience of return by Ecuadorian and Cuban men and women who migrated to Spain, are dissatisfied with their life there, and envisage/carry out the project of going back to their countries of origin (Ecuador and Cuba respectively). The project’s ambition is to bring together and contribute to three main scholarly areas of enquiry: 1) the study of morality, ethics and what counts as ‘good life’, 2) the study of the field of economic practice, its definition, value regimes, and ‘crises’, and 3) the study of migratory aspirations, projects, and trajectories. A multi-sited endeavour, the research is designed in three subprojects carried out in Spain (PhD student), Ecuador (Post-Doc), and Cuba (PI), in which ethnographic methods will be used to provide the first empirically grounded study of the links between notions and experiences of crisis, return migration, and the (re)assessment of good living.

What makes for a valuable and good life is a question that many people in the contemporary world ask themselves, yet it is one that social science research has seldom addressed. Only recently have scholars started undertaking inductive comparative research on different notions of the ‘good life’, highlighting socio-cultural variations and calling for a better understanding of the different imaginaries, aspirations and values that guide people in their quest for better living conditions. Research is still lacking, however, on how people themselves evaluate, compare, and put into perspective different visions of good living and their socio-cultural anchorage. This project addresses such questions from an anthropological perspective, proposing an innovative study of how ideals of the good life are articulated, (re)assessed, and related to specific places and contexts as a result of the experience of crisis and migration. The case studies chosen to operationalize these lines of enquiry focus on the phenomenon of return migration, and consist in an analysis of the imaginaries and experience of return by Ecuadorian and Cuban men and women who migrated to Spain, are dissatisfied with their life there, and envisage/carry out the project of going back to their countries of origin (Ecuador and Cuba respectively). The project’s ambition is to bring together and contribute to three main scholarly areas of enquiry: 1) the study of morality, ethics and what counts as ‘good life’, 2) the study of the field of economic practice, its definition, value regimes, and ‘crises’, and 3) the study of migratory aspirations, projects, and trajectories. A multi-sited endeavour, the research is designed in three subprojects carried out in Spain (PhD student), Ecuador (Post-Doc), and Cuba (PI), in which ethnographic methods will be used to provide the first empirically grounded study of the links between notions and experiences of crisis, return migration, and the (re)assessment of good living.

Max ERC Funding

1 500 000 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31

Project acronymBIGlobal

ProjectFirm Growth and Market Power in the Global Economy

Researcher (PI)Swati DHINGRA

Host Institution (HI)LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryAccording to the European Commission, to design effective policies for ensuring a “more dynamic, innovative and competitive” economy, it is essential to understand the decision-making process of firms as they differ a lot in terms of their capacities and policy responses (EC 2007). The objective of my future research is to provide such an analysis. BIGlobal will examine the sources of firm growth and market power to provide new insights into welfare and policy in a globalized world.
Much of analysis of the global economy is set in the paradigm of markets that allocate resources efficiently and there is little role for policy. But big firms dominate economic activity, especially across borders. How do firms grow and what is the effect of their market power on the welfare impact of globalization? This project will determine how firm decisions matter for the aggregate gains from globalization, the division of these gains across different individuals and their implications for policy design.
Over the next five years, I will incorporate richer firms behaviour in models of international trade to understand how trade and industrial policies impact the growth process, especially in less developed markets. The specific questions I will address include: how can trade and competition policy ensure consumers benefit from globalization when firms engaged in international trade have market power, how do domestic policies to encourage agribusiness firms affect the extent to which small farmers gain from trade, how do industrial policies affect firm growth through input linkages, and what is the impact of banking globalization on the growth of firms in the real sector.
Each project will combine theoretical work with rich data from developing economies to expand the frontier of knowledge on trade and industrial policy, and to provide a basis for informed policymaking.

According to the European Commission, to design effective policies for ensuring a “more dynamic, innovative and competitive” economy, it is essential to understand the decision-making process of firms as they differ a lot in terms of their capacities and policy responses (EC 2007). The objective of my future research is to provide such an analysis. BIGlobal will examine the sources of firm growth and market power to provide new insights into welfare and policy in a globalized world.
Much of analysis of the global economy is set in the paradigm of markets that allocate resources efficiently and there is little role for policy. But big firms dominate economic activity, especially across borders. How do firms grow and what is the effect of their market power on the welfare impact of globalization? This project will determine how firm decisions matter for the aggregate gains from globalization, the division of these gains across different individuals and their implications for policy design.
Over the next five years, I will incorporate richer firms behaviour in models of international trade to understand how trade and industrial policies impact the growth process, especially in less developed markets. The specific questions I will address include: how can trade and competition policy ensure consumers benefit from globalization when firms engaged in international trade have market power, how do domestic policies to encourage agribusiness firms affect the extent to which small farmers gain from trade, how do industrial policies affect firm growth through input linkages, and what is the impact of banking globalization on the growth of firms in the real sector.
Each project will combine theoretical work with rich data from developing economies to expand the frontier of knowledge on trade and industrial policy, and to provide a basis for informed policymaking.

SummaryRecent advances in cryptography yielded the blockchain technology, which enables a radically new and decentralized method to maintain authoritative records, without the need of trusted intermediaries. Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency blockchain application has already demonstrated that it is possible to operate a purely cryptography-based, global, distributed, decentralized, anonymous financial network, independent from central and commercial banks, regulators and the state.
The same technology is now being applied to other social domains (e.g. public registries of ownership and deeds, voting systems, the internet domain name registry). But research on the societal impact of blockchain innovation is scant, and we cannot properly assess its risks and promises. In addition, crucial knowledge is missing on how blockchain technologies can and should be regulated by law.
The BlockchainSociety project focuses on three research questions. (1) What internal factors contribute to the success of a blockchain application? (2) How does society adopt blockchain? (3) How to regulate blockchain? It breaks new ground as it (1) maps the most important blockchain projects, their governance, and assesses their disruptive potential; (2) documents and analyses the social diffusion of the technology, and builds scenarios about the potential impact of blockchain diffusion; and (3) it creates an inventory of emerging policy responses, compares and assesses policy tools in terms of efficiency and impact. The project will (1) build the conceptual and methodological bridges between information law, the study of the self-governance of technological systems via Science and Technology Studies, and the study of collective control efforts of complex socio-technological assemblages via Internet Governance studies; (2) address the most pressing blockchain-specific regulatory challenges via the analysis of emerging policies, and the development of new proposals.

Recent advances in cryptography yielded the blockchain technology, which enables a radically new and decentralized method to maintain authoritative records, without the need of trusted intermediaries. Bitcoin, a cryptocurrency blockchain application has already demonstrated that it is possible to operate a purely cryptography-based, global, distributed, decentralized, anonymous financial network, independent from central and commercial banks, regulators and the state.
The same technology is now being applied to other social domains (e.g. public registries of ownership and deeds, voting systems, the internet domain name registry). But research on the societal impact of blockchain innovation is scant, and we cannot properly assess its risks and promises. In addition, crucial knowledge is missing on how blockchain technologies can and should be regulated by law.
The BlockchainSociety project focuses on three research questions. (1) What internal factors contribute to the success of a blockchain application? (2) How does society adopt blockchain? (3) How to regulate blockchain? It breaks new ground as it (1) maps the most important blockchain projects, their governance, and assesses their disruptive potential; (2) documents and analyses the social diffusion of the technology, and builds scenarios about the potential impact of blockchain diffusion; and (3) it creates an inventory of emerging policy responses, compares and assesses policy tools in terms of efficiency and impact. The project will (1) build the conceptual and methodological bridges between information law, the study of the self-governance of technological systems via Science and Technology Studies, and the study of collective control efforts of complex socio-technological assemblages via Internet Governance studies; (2) address the most pressing blockchain-specific regulatory challenges via the analysis of emerging policies, and the development of new proposals.

Max ERC Funding

1 499 631 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31

Project acronymBrain2Bee

ProjectHow dopamine affects social and motor ability - from the human brain to the honey bee

Researcher (PI)Jennifer COOK

Host Institution (HI)THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryParkinson’s Disease is usually characterised by motor impairment, and Autism by social difficulties. However, the co-occurrence of social and motor symptoms is critically underappreciated; Parkinson’s Disease patients exhibit social symptoms, and motor difficulties are common in Autism. At present, the biological basis of co-occurring social and motor impairment is unclear. Notably, both Autism and Parkinson’s Disease have been associated with dopamine (DA) system dysfunction and, in non-clinical populations, DA has been linked with social and motor ability. These disparate strands of research have never been combined.
Brain2Bee will use psychopharmacology in typical individuals to develop a model of the relationship between DA, Motor, and Social behaviour – the DAMS model. Brain2Bee will use sophisticated genetic analysis to refine DAMS, elucidating the contributions of DA-related biological processes (e.g. synthesis, receptor expression, reuptake). Brain2Bee will then test DAMS’ predictions in patients with Parkinson’s Disease and Autism. Finally, Brain2Bee will investigate whether DAMS generalises to an animal model, the honey bee, enabling future research to unpack the cascade of biological events linking DA-related genes with social and motor behaviour.
Brain2Bee will unite disparate research fields and establish the DAMS model. The causal structure of DAMS will identify the impact of dopaminergic variation on social and motor function in clinical and non-clinical populations, elucidating, for example, whether social difficulties in Parkinson’s Disease are a product of the motor difficulties caused by DA dysfunction. DAMS’ biological specificity will provide unique insight into the DA-related processes linking social and motor difficulties in Autism. Thus, Brain2Bee will determine the type of dopaminergic drugs (e.g. receptor blockers, reuptake inhibitors) most likely to improve both social and motor function.

Parkinson’s Disease is usually characterised by motor impairment, and Autism by social difficulties. However, the co-occurrence of social and motor symptoms is critically underappreciated; Parkinson’s Disease patients exhibit social symptoms, and motor difficulties are common in Autism. At present, the biological basis of co-occurring social and motor impairment is unclear. Notably, both Autism and Parkinson’s Disease have been associated with dopamine (DA) system dysfunction and, in non-clinical populations, DA has been linked with social and motor ability. These disparate strands of research have never been combined.
Brain2Bee will use psychopharmacology in typical individuals to develop a model of the relationship between DA, Motor, and Social behaviour – the DAMS model. Brain2Bee will use sophisticated genetic analysis to refine DAMS, elucidating the contributions of DA-related biological processes (e.g. synthesis, receptor expression, reuptake). Brain2Bee will then test DAMS’ predictions in patients with Parkinson’s Disease and Autism. Finally, Brain2Bee will investigate whether DAMS generalises to an animal model, the honey bee, enabling future research to unpack the cascade of biological events linking DA-related genes with social and motor behaviour.
Brain2Bee will unite disparate research fields and establish the DAMS model. The causal structure of DAMS will identify the impact of dopaminergic variation on social and motor function in clinical and non-clinical populations, elucidating, for example, whether social difficulties in Parkinson’s Disease are a product of the motor difficulties caused by DA dysfunction. DAMS’ biological specificity will provide unique insight into the DA-related processes linking social and motor difficulties in Autism. Thus, Brain2Bee will determine the type of dopaminergic drugs (e.g. receptor blockers, reuptake inhibitors) most likely to improve both social and motor function.

Max ERC Funding

1 783 147 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-07-01, End date: 2023-06-30

Project acronymBSP

ProjectBelief Systems Project

Researcher (PI)Mark BRANDT

Host Institution (HI)STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT BRABANT

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryBelief systems research is vital for understanding democratic politics, extremism, and political decision-making. What is the basic structure of belief systems? Clear answers to this fundamental question are not forthcoming. This is due to flaws in the conceptualization of belief systems. The state-of-the-art treats a belief system as a theoretical latent variable that causes people’s responses on attitudes and values relevant to the belief system. This approach cannot assess a belief system because it cannot assess the network of connections between the beliefs–attitudes and values–that make up the system; it collapses across them and the interrelationships are lost.
The Belief Systems Project conceptualizations belief systems as systems of interconnecting attitudes and values. I conceptualize attitudes and values as interactive nodes in a network that are analysed with network analyses. With these conceptual and empirical tools, I can understand the structure and dynamics of the belief system and will be able to avoid theoretical pitfalls common in belief system assessments. This project will move belief systems research beyond the state-of-the-art in four ways by:
1. Mapping the structure of systems of attitudes and values, something that is not possible using current methods.
2. Answering classic questions about central concepts and clustering of belief systems.
3. Modeling within-person belief systems and their variations, so that I can make accurate predictions about partisan motivated reasoning.
4. Testing how external and internal pressures (e.g., feelings of threat) change the underlying structure and dynamics of belief systems.
Using survey data from around the world, longitudinal panel studies, intensive longitudinal designs, experiments, and text analyses, I will triangulate on the structure of political belief systems over time, between countries, and within individuals.

Belief systems research is vital for understanding democratic politics, extremism, and political decision-making. What is the basic structure of belief systems? Clear answers to this fundamental question are not forthcoming. This is due to flaws in the conceptualization of belief systems. The state-of-the-art treats a belief system as a theoretical latent variable that causes people’s responses on attitudes and values relevant to the belief system. This approach cannot assess a belief system because it cannot assess the network of connections between the beliefs–attitudes and values–that make up the system; it collapses across them and the interrelationships are lost.
The Belief Systems Project conceptualizations belief systems as systems of interconnecting attitudes and values. I conceptualize attitudes and values as interactive nodes in a network that are analysed with network analyses. With these conceptual and empirical tools, I can understand the structure and dynamics of the belief system and will be able to avoid theoretical pitfalls common in belief system assessments. This project will move belief systems research beyond the state-of-the-art in four ways by:
1. Mapping the structure of systems of attitudes and values, something that is not possible using current methods.
2. Answering classic questions about central concepts and clustering of belief systems.
3. Modeling within-person belief systems and their variations, so that I can make accurate predictions about partisan motivated reasoning.
4. Testing how external and internal pressures (e.g., feelings of threat) change the underlying structure and dynamics of belief systems.
Using survey data from around the world, longitudinal panel studies, intensive longitudinal designs, experiments, and text analyses, I will triangulate on the structure of political belief systems over time, between countries, and within individuals.

Max ERC Funding

1 496 944 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-07-01, End date: 2023-06-30

Project acronymCALLIOPE

ProjectvoCAL articuLations Of Parliamentary Identity and Empire

Researcher (PI)Josephine HOEGAERTS

Host Institution (HI)HELSINGIN YLIOPISTO

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryWhat did politicians sound like before they were on the radio and television? The fascination with politicians’ vocal characteristics and quirks is often connected to the rise of audio-visual media. But in the age of the printed press, political representatives also had to ‘speak well’ – without recourse to amplification.
Historians and linguists have provided sophisticated understandings of the discursive and aesthetic aspects of politicians’ language, but have largely ignored the importance of the acoustic character of their speech. CALLIOPE studies how vocal performances in parliament have influenced the course of political careers and political decision making in the 19th century. It shows how politicians’ voices helped to define the diverse identities they articulated. In viewing parliament through the lens of audibility, the project offers a new perspective on political representation by reframing how authority was embodied (through performances that were heard, rather than seen). It does so for the Second Chamber in Britain and France, and in dialogue with ‘colonial’ modes of speech in Kolkata and Algiers, which, we argue, exerted considerable influence on European vocal culture.
The project devises an innovative methodological approach to include the sound of the human voice in studies of the past that precede acoustic recording. Adapting methods developed in sound studies and combining them with the tools of political history, the project proposes a new way to analyse parliamentary reporting, while also drawing on a variety of sources that are rarely connected to the history of politics.
The main source material for the study comprise transcripts of parliamentary speech (official reports and renditions by journalists). However, the project also mobilizes educational, satirical and fictional sources to elucidate the convoluted processes that led to the cultivation, exertion, reception and evaluation of a voice ‘fit’ for nineteenth-century politics.

What did politicians sound like before they were on the radio and television? The fascination with politicians’ vocal characteristics and quirks is often connected to the rise of audio-visual media. But in the age of the printed press, political representatives also had to ‘speak well’ – without recourse to amplification.
Historians and linguists have provided sophisticated understandings of the discursive and aesthetic aspects of politicians’ language, but have largely ignored the importance of the acoustic character of their speech. CALLIOPE studies how vocal performances in parliament have influenced the course of political careers and political decision making in the 19th century. It shows how politicians’ voices helped to define the diverse identities they articulated. In viewing parliament through the lens of audibility, the project offers a new perspective on political representation by reframing how authority was embodied (through performances that were heard, rather than seen). It does so for the Second Chamber in Britain and France, and in dialogue with ‘colonial’ modes of speech in Kolkata and Algiers, which, we argue, exerted considerable influence on European vocal culture.
The project devises an innovative methodological approach to include the sound of the human voice in studies of the past that precede acoustic recording. Adapting methods developed in sound studies and combining them with the tools of political history, the project proposes a new way to analyse parliamentary reporting, while also drawing on a variety of sources that are rarely connected to the history of politics.
The main source material for the study comprise transcripts of parliamentary speech (official reports and renditions by journalists). However, the project also mobilizes educational, satirical and fictional sources to elucidate the convoluted processes that led to the cultivation, exertion, reception and evaluation of a voice ‘fit’ for nineteenth-century politics.

Max ERC Funding

1 499 905 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

Project acronymCAPABLE

ProjectEnhancing Capabilities? Rethinking Work-life Policies and their Impact from a New Perspective

Researcher (PI)Mara YERKES

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITEIT UTRECHT

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryWe have witnessed significant work-life policy advancements designed to help men and women more equally combine employment with other spheres of life in recent decades, yet gender inequality persists. Improving gender equality in work-life balance is therefore high on policy agendas throughout Europe. Decades of research in this area have produced key insights but work-family theories fail to sufficiently explain the tenacity of this inequality. Earlier applications of a capabilities approach to work-life balance offer promising inroads, yet the importance of community remains absent. The CAPABLE project will generate fundamentally new knowledge on how work-life balance policies impact an individual’s capability to achieve this balance in Europe by incorporating the understudied dimension of community.
Capabilities reflect what individuals are effectively able to achieve. CAPABLE asks: To what extent do work-life balance policies enhance men and women’s capabilities to achieve work-life balance? To answer this question, we will develop and apply complex models derived from Sen’s capability approach to analyse: 1. the availability, accessibility and design of work-family policies; 2. what these policies mean for men and women’s capabilities to achieve work-life balance based on their embeddedness in individual, community and social contexts; 3. whether work-life policies enhance individual wellbeing; and 4. what policy tools are needed for developing sustainable work-life balance policies that enhance gender equal work-life capabilities. CAPABLE will progress scientific and policy frontiers using innovative, mixed-methods approaches at multiple policy levels. The conceptual clarity and empirical advancements provided will significantly expand our understanding of work-life policies in relation to individual capabilities. Furthermore, it will produce key insights into how sustainable work-life policies addressing gender inequality in work-life can be developed.

We have witnessed significant work-life policy advancements designed to help men and women more equally combine employment with other spheres of life in recent decades, yet gender inequality persists. Improving gender equality in work-life balance is therefore high on policy agendas throughout Europe. Decades of research in this area have produced key insights but work-family theories fail to sufficiently explain the tenacity of this inequality. Earlier applications of a capabilities approach to work-life balance offer promising inroads, yet the importance of community remains absent. The CAPABLE project will generate fundamentally new knowledge on how work-life balance policies impact an individual’s capability to achieve this balance in Europe by incorporating the understudied dimension of community.
Capabilities reflect what individuals are effectively able to achieve. CAPABLE asks: To what extent do work-life balance policies enhance men and women’s capabilities to achieve work-life balance? To answer this question, we will develop and apply complex models derived from Sen’s capability approach to analyse: 1. the availability, accessibility and design of work-family policies; 2. what these policies mean for men and women’s capabilities to achieve work-life balance based on their embeddedness in individual, community and social contexts; 3. whether work-life policies enhance individual wellbeing; and 4. what policy tools are needed for developing sustainable work-life balance policies that enhance gender equal work-life capabilities. CAPABLE will progress scientific and policy frontiers using innovative, mixed-methods approaches at multiple policy levels. The conceptual clarity and empirical advancements provided will significantly expand our understanding of work-life policies in relation to individual capabilities. Furthermore, it will produce key insights into how sustainable work-life policies addressing gender inequality in work-life can be developed.

Max ERC Funding

1 999 748 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-12-01, End date: 2023-11-30

Project acronymCAPE

ProjectGhosts from the past: Consequences of Adolescent Peer Experiences across social contexts and generations

Researcher (PI)Tina KRETSCHMER

Host Institution (HI)RIJKSUNIVERSITEIT GRONINGEN

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryPositive peer experiences are crucial for young people’s health and wellbeing. Accordingly, multiple studies (including my own) have described long-term negative psychological and behavioral consequences when adolescents’ peer relationships are dysfunctional. Paradoxically, knowledge on adult social consequences of adolescent peer experiences –relationships with others a decade later - is much less extensive. Informed by social learning and attachment theory, I tackle this gap and investigate whether and how peer experiences are transmitted to other social contexts, and intergenerationally, i.e., passed on to the next generation. My aim is to shed light on how the “ghosts from peer past” affect young adults’ relationships and their children. To this end, I examine longitudinal links between adolescent peer and young adult close relationships and test whether parents’ peer experiences affect offspring’s peer experiences. Psychological functioning, parenting, temperament, genetic, and epigenetic transmission mechanisms are examined separately and in interplay, which 1) goes far beyond the current state-of-the-art in social development research, and 2) significantly broadens my biosocially oriented work on genetic effects in the peer context. My plans utilize data from the TRAILS (Tracking Adolescents’ Individual Lives’ Survey) cohort that has been followed from age 11 to 26. To study intergenerational transmission, the TRAILS NEXT sample of participants with children is substantially extended. This project uniquely studies adult social consequences of peer experiences and, at the same time, follows children’s first steps into the peer world. The intergenerational approach and provision for environmental, genetic, and epigenetic mediation put this project at the forefront of developmental research and equip it with the potential to generate the knowledge needed to chase away the ghosts from the peer past.

Positive peer experiences are crucial for young people’s health and wellbeing. Accordingly, multiple studies (including my own) have described long-term negative psychological and behavioral consequences when adolescents’ peer relationships are dysfunctional. Paradoxically, knowledge on adult social consequences of adolescent peer experiences –relationships with others a decade later - is much less extensive. Informed by social learning and attachment theory, I tackle this gap and investigate whether and how peer experiences are transmitted to other social contexts, and intergenerationally, i.e., passed on to the next generation. My aim is to shed light on how the “ghosts from peer past” affect young adults’ relationships and their children. To this end, I examine longitudinal links between adolescent peer and young adult close relationships and test whether parents’ peer experiences affect offspring’s peer experiences. Psychological functioning, parenting, temperament, genetic, and epigenetic transmission mechanisms are examined separately and in interplay, which 1) goes far beyond the current state-of-the-art in social development research, and 2) significantly broadens my biosocially oriented work on genetic effects in the peer context. My plans utilize data from the TRAILS (Tracking Adolescents’ Individual Lives’ Survey) cohort that has been followed from age 11 to 26. To study intergenerational transmission, the TRAILS NEXT sample of participants with children is substantially extended. This project uniquely studies adult social consequences of peer experiences and, at the same time, follows children’s first steps into the peer world. The intergenerational approach and provision for environmental, genetic, and epigenetic mediation put this project at the forefront of developmental research and equip it with the potential to generate the knowledge needed to chase away the ghosts from the peer past.

Max ERC Funding

1 464 846 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-02-01, End date: 2023-01-31

Project acronymCATENA

ProjectCommentary Manuscripts in the History and Transmission of the Greek New Testament

Researcher (PI)HUGH ALEXANDER GERVASE HOUGHTON

Host Institution (HI)THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH5, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryManuscripts which contain commentary alongside the biblical text are some of the most significant and complicated witnesses to the Greek New Testament. First compiled around the fifth century, the commentaries consist of chains of extracts from earlier writers (catenae). These manuscripts became the main way in which users encountered both the text and the interpretation of the New Testament; revised editions produced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries continued to hold the field until the invention of printing.
Recent advances have shown that commentary manuscripts play a much more important role than previously thought in the history of the New Testament. The number of known copies has increased by 20% following a preliminary survey last year which identified 100 additional manuscripts. A recent comprehensive textual analysis of the Catholic Epistles indicated that all witnesses from the third generation onwards (some 72% of the total) could stem from the biblical text of three commentary manuscripts occupying a key place in the textual tradition. Investigation of the catena on Mark has shown that the selection of extracts could offer a new approach to understanding the theology of the compilers and the transmission of the commentaries.
The CATENA Project will use digital tools to undertake a fuller examination of Greek New Testament commentary manuscripts than has ever before been possible. This will include an exhaustive survey to establish a complete list of witnesses; a database of extracts to examine their principles of organisation and relationships; and electronic transcriptions to determine their role in the transmission of the biblical text. The results will have a direct impact on editions of the Greek New Testament, providing a new understanding of its text and reception and leading to broader insights into history and culture.

Manuscripts which contain commentary alongside the biblical text are some of the most significant and complicated witnesses to the Greek New Testament. First compiled around the fifth century, the commentaries consist of chains of extracts from earlier writers (catenae). These manuscripts became the main way in which users encountered both the text and the interpretation of the New Testament; revised editions produced in the eleventh and twelfth centuries continued to hold the field until the invention of printing.
Recent advances have shown that commentary manuscripts play a much more important role than previously thought in the history of the New Testament. The number of known copies has increased by 20% following a preliminary survey last year which identified 100 additional manuscripts. A recent comprehensive textual analysis of the Catholic Epistles indicated that all witnesses from the third generation onwards (some 72% of the total) could stem from the biblical text of three commentary manuscripts occupying a key place in the textual tradition. Investigation of the catena on Mark has shown that the selection of extracts could offer a new approach to understanding the theology of the compilers and the transmission of the commentaries.
The CATENA Project will use digital tools to undertake a fuller examination of Greek New Testament commentary manuscripts than has ever before been possible. This will include an exhaustive survey to establish a complete list of witnesses; a database of extracts to examine their principles of organisation and relationships; and electronic transcriptions to determine their role in the transmission of the biblical text. The results will have a direct impact on editions of the Greek New Testament, providing a new understanding of its text and reception and leading to broader insights into history and culture.

Max ERC Funding

1 756 928 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31

Project acronymCCLAD

ProjectThe Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage

Researcher (PI)Lisa VANHALA

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryThe way in which normative principles (“norms”) matter in world politics is now a key area of international relations research. Yet we have limited understanding of why some norms emerge and gain traction globally whereas others do not. The politics of loss and damage related to climate change offers a paradigm case for studying the emergence of - and contestation over - norms, specifically justice norms. The parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have recently acknowledged that there is an urgent need to address the inevitable, irreversible consequences of climate change. Yet within this highly contested policy area - which includes work on disaster risk reduction; non-economic losses (e.g. loss of sovereignty); finance and climate-related migration - there is little consensus about what loss and damage policy means or what it requires of the global community, of states and of the (current and future) victims of climate change. Relying on an interdisciplinary theoretical approach and an ethnographic methodology that traverses scales of governance, my project - The Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) - will elucidate the conditions under which a norm is likely to become hegemonic, influential, contested or reversed by introducing a new understanding of the fluid nature of norm-content. I argue that norms are partly constituted through the practices of policy-making and implementation at the international and national level. The research will examine the micro-politics of the international negotiations and implementation of loss and damage policy and also involves cross-national comparative research on domestic loss and damage policy practices. Bringing these two streams of work together will allow me to show how and why policy practices shape the evolution of climate justice norms. CCLAD will also make an important methodological contribution through the development of political ethnography and “practice-tracing” methods.

The way in which normative principles (“norms”) matter in world politics is now a key area of international relations research. Yet we have limited understanding of why some norms emerge and gain traction globally whereas others do not. The politics of loss and damage related to climate change offers a paradigm case for studying the emergence of - and contestation over - norms, specifically justice norms. The parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have recently acknowledged that there is an urgent need to address the inevitable, irreversible consequences of climate change. Yet within this highly contested policy area - which includes work on disaster risk reduction; non-economic losses (e.g. loss of sovereignty); finance and climate-related migration - there is little consensus about what loss and damage policy means or what it requires of the global community, of states and of the (current and future) victims of climate change. Relying on an interdisciplinary theoretical approach and an ethnographic methodology that traverses scales of governance, my project - The Politics of Climate Change Loss and Damage (CCLAD) - will elucidate the conditions under which a norm is likely to become hegemonic, influential, contested or reversed by introducing a new understanding of the fluid nature of norm-content. I argue that norms are partly constituted through the practices of policy-making and implementation at the international and national level. The research will examine the micro-politics of the international negotiations and implementation of loss and damage policy and also involves cross-national comparative research on domestic loss and damage policy practices. Bringing these two streams of work together will allow me to show how and why policy practices shape the evolution of climate justice norms. CCLAD will also make an important methodological contribution through the development of political ethnography and “practice-tracing” methods.

SummaryResearch on the role played by women as actors and by gender as a cultural category has crucially contributed to historiographical revision of the Enlightenment and its legacy to the modern world. However, the perspective adopted has been national or, if comparative, mostly radial. A leap forward is urgent because current circulationist approaches to the Enlightenment tend to forget its key gender dimension and to underplay contributions from Southern Europe. This projects offers, for the first time in the field, a systematic,truly transnational and transatlantic approach, which knits together cultural, intellectual, gender and postcolonial history, literary, philosophical and visual studies. It looks at the cultural transfer of gender notions in global perspective around five axes: translation, learned sociability, travel, reading and sensibility, to be explored through textual and iconographic analysis and archival research. Adopting the vantage point of Spain and its empire will allow to question approaches based either on the “national context” or the centre-periphery dichotomy, to reassess the role of the Catholic Enlightenment in the making of modernity and to highlight the mediating roles played by local actors, male and female, in processes of sociocultural change.
CIRGEN’s specific objectives are: to challenge dichotomous visions of Enlightenment discourses of gender by stressing their plural (and often conflictive) contribution to modernity; to decenter customary radial perspectives by stressing multilateral dialogues both within Europe and beyond; to better understand the role played by gender in the cultural geography of Enlightenment, particularly in the construction of the South/North symbolic divide; to produce empirically grounded evidence of the practical and iconic role of women in the making of modern reading publics; to foster innovative scholarship on the gendering of emotions in defining national identities and moral standards of civilization.

Research on the role played by women as actors and by gender as a cultural category has crucially contributed to historiographical revision of the Enlightenment and its legacy to the modern world. However, the perspective adopted has been national or, if comparative, mostly radial. A leap forward is urgent because current circulationist approaches to the Enlightenment tend to forget its key gender dimension and to underplay contributions from Southern Europe. This projects offers, for the first time in the field, a systematic,truly transnational and transatlantic approach, which knits together cultural, intellectual, gender and postcolonial history, literary, philosophical and visual studies. It looks at the cultural transfer of gender notions in global perspective around five axes: translation, learned sociability, travel, reading and sensibility, to be explored through textual and iconographic analysis and archival research. Adopting the vantage point of Spain and its empire will allow to question approaches based either on the “national context” or the centre-periphery dichotomy, to reassess the role of the Catholic Enlightenment in the making of modernity and to highlight the mediating roles played by local actors, male and female, in processes of sociocultural change.
CIRGEN’s specific objectives are: to challenge dichotomous visions of Enlightenment discourses of gender by stressing their plural (and often conflictive) contribution to modernity; to decenter customary radial perspectives by stressing multilateral dialogues both within Europe and beyond; to better understand the role played by gender in the cultural geography of Enlightenment, particularly in the construction of the South/North symbolic divide; to produce empirically grounded evidence of the practical and iconic role of women in the making of modern reading publics; to foster innovative scholarship on the gendering of emotions in defining national identities and moral standards of civilization.

Max ERC Funding

2 499 415 €

Duration

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

Project acronymCIVICS

ProjectCriminality, Victimization and Social Interactions

Researcher (PI)Katrine Vellesen LOKEN

Host Institution (HI)NORGES HANDELSHOYSKOLE

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryA large social science literature tries to describe and understand the causes and consequences of crime, usually focusing on individuals’ criminal activity in isolation. The ambitious aim of this research project is to establish a broader perspective of crime that takes into account the social context in which it takes place. The findings will inform policymakers on how to better use funds both for crime prevention and the rehabilitation of incarcerated criminals.
Criminal activity is often a group phenomenon, yet little is known about how criminal networks form and what can be done to break them up or prevent them from forming in the first place. Overlooking victims of crime and their relationships to criminals has led to an incomplete and distorted view of crime and its individual and social costs. While a better understanding of these social interactions is crucial for designing more effective anti-crime policy, existing research in criminology, sociology and economics has struggled to identify causal effects due to data limitations and difficult statistical identification issues.
This project will push the research frontier by combining register datasets that have never been merged before, and by using several state-of-the-art statistical methods to estimate causal effects related to criminal peer groups and their victims. More specifically, we aim to do the following:
-Use recent advances in network modelling to describe the structure and density of various criminal networks and study network dynamics following the arrest/incarceration or death of a central player in a network.
-Obtain a more accurate measure of the societal costs of crime, including actual measures for lost earnings and physical and mental health problems, following victims and their offenders both before and after a crime takes place.
-Conduct a randomized controlled trial within a prison system to better understand how current rehabilitation programs affect criminal and victim networks.

A large social science literature tries to describe and understand the causes and consequences of crime, usually focusing on individuals’ criminal activity in isolation. The ambitious aim of this research project is to establish a broader perspective of crime that takes into account the social context in which it takes place. The findings will inform policymakers on how to better use funds both for crime prevention and the rehabilitation of incarcerated criminals.
Criminal activity is often a group phenomenon, yet little is known about how criminal networks form and what can be done to break them up or prevent them from forming in the first place. Overlooking victims of crime and their relationships to criminals has led to an incomplete and distorted view of crime and its individual and social costs. While a better understanding of these social interactions is crucial for designing more effective anti-crime policy, existing research in criminology, sociology and economics has struggled to identify causal effects due to data limitations and difficult statistical identification issues.
This project will push the research frontier by combining register datasets that have never been merged before, and by using several state-of-the-art statistical methods to estimate causal effects related to criminal peer groups and their victims. More specifically, we aim to do the following:
-Use recent advances in network modelling to describe the structure and density of various criminal networks and study network dynamics following the arrest/incarceration or death of a central player in a network.
-Obtain a more accurate measure of the societal costs of crime, including actual measures for lost earnings and physical and mental health problems, following victims and their offenders both before and after a crime takes place.
-Conduct a randomized controlled trial within a prison system to better understand how current rehabilitation programs affect criminal and victim networks.

Max ERC Funding

1 187 046 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

Project acronymCoAct

ProjectCommunication in Action: Towards a model of Contextualized Action and Language Processing

Researcher (PI)Judith HOLLER

Host Institution (HI)STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryLanguage is fundamental to human sociality. While the last century has given us many fundamental insights into how we use and understand it, core issues that we face when doing so within its natural environment—face-to-face conversation—remain untackled. When we speak we also send signals with our head, eyes, face, hands, torso, etc. How do we orchestrate and integrate all this information into meaningful messages? CoAct will lead to a new model with in situ language processing at its core, the Contextualized Action and Language (CoALa) processing model. The defining characteristic of in situ language is its multimodal nature. Moreover, the essence of language use is social action; that is, we use language to do things—we question, offer, decline etc. These social actions are embedded in conversational structure where one speaking turn follows another at a remarkable speed, with millisecond gaps between them. Conversation thus confronts us with a significant psycholinguistic challenge. While one could expect that the many co-speech bodily signals exacerbate this challenge, CoAct proposes that they actually play a key role in dealing with it. It tests this in three subprojects that combine methods from a variety of disciplines but focus on the social actions performed by questions and responses as a uniting theme: (1) ProdAct uses conversational corpora to investigate the multimodal architecture of social actions with the assumption that they differ in their ‘visual signatures’, (2) CompAct tests whether these bodily signatures contribute to social action comprehension, and if they do so early and rapidly, (3) IntAct investigates whether bodily signals play a facilitating role also when faced with the complex task of comprehending while planning a next social action. Thus, CoAct aims to advance current psycholinguistic theory by developing a new model of language processing based on an integrative framework uniting aspects from psychology , philosophy and sociology.

Language is fundamental to human sociality. While the last century has given us many fundamental insights into how we use and understand it, core issues that we face when doing so within its natural environment—face-to-face conversation—remain untackled. When we speak we also send signals with our head, eyes, face, hands, torso, etc. How do we orchestrate and integrate all this information into meaningful messages? CoAct will lead to a new model with in situ language processing at its core, the Contextualized Action and Language (CoALa) processing model. The defining characteristic of in situ language is its multimodal nature. Moreover, the essence of language use is social action; that is, we use language to do things—we question, offer, decline etc. These social actions are embedded in conversational structure where one speaking turn follows another at a remarkable speed, with millisecond gaps between them. Conversation thus confronts us with a significant psycholinguistic challenge. While one could expect that the many co-speech bodily signals exacerbate this challenge, CoAct proposes that they actually play a key role in dealing with it. It tests this in three subprojects that combine methods from a variety of disciplines but focus on the social actions performed by questions and responses as a uniting theme: (1) ProdAct uses conversational corpora to investigate the multimodal architecture of social actions with the assumption that they differ in their ‘visual signatures’, (2) CompAct tests whether these bodily signatures contribute to social action comprehension, and if they do so early and rapidly, (3) IntAct investigates whether bodily signals play a facilitating role also when faced with the complex task of comprehending while planning a next social action. Thus, CoAct aims to advance current psycholinguistic theory by developing a new model of language processing based on an integrative framework uniting aspects from psychology , philosophy and sociology.

Max ERC Funding

2 000 000 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Project acronymCOGNAP

ProjectTo nap or not to nap? Why napping habits interfere with cognitive fitness in ageing

Researcher (PI)Christina Hildegard SCHMIDT

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITE DE LIEGE

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH4, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryAll of us know of individuals who remain cognitively sharp at an advanced age. Identifying novel factors which associate with inter-individual variability in -and can be considered protective for- cognitive decline is a promising area in ageing research. Considering its strong implication in neuroprotective function, COGNAP predicts that variability in circadian rhythmicity explains a significant part of the age-related changes in human cognition. Circadian rhythms -one of the most fundamental processes of living organisms- are present throughout the nervous system and act on cognitive brain function. Circadian rhythms shape the temporal organization of sleep and wakefulness to achieve human diurnality, characterized by a consolidated bout of sleep during night-time and a continuous period of wakefulness during the day. Of prime importance is that the temporal organization of sleep and wakefulness evolves throughout the adult lifespan, leading to higher sleep-wake fragmentation with ageing. The increasing occurrence of daytime napping is the most visible manifestation of this fragmentation. Contrary to the common belief, napping stands as a health risk factor in seniors in epidemiological data. I posit that chronic napping in older people primarily reflects circadian disruption. Based on my preliminary findings, I predict that this disruption will lead to lower cognitive fitness. I further hypothesise that a re-stabilization of circadian sleep-wake organization through a nap prevention intervention will reduce age-related cognitive decline. Characterizing the link between cognitive ageing and the temporal distribution of sleep and wakefulness will not only bring ground-breaking advances at the scientific level, but is also timely in the ageing society. Cognitive decline, as well as inadequately timed sleep, represent dominant determinants of the health span of our fast ageing population and easy implementable intervention programs are urgently needed.

All of us know of individuals who remain cognitively sharp at an advanced age. Identifying novel factors which associate with inter-individual variability in -and can be considered protective for- cognitive decline is a promising area in ageing research. Considering its strong implication in neuroprotective function, COGNAP predicts that variability in circadian rhythmicity explains a significant part of the age-related changes in human cognition. Circadian rhythms -one of the most fundamental processes of living organisms- are present throughout the nervous system and act on cognitive brain function. Circadian rhythms shape the temporal organization of sleep and wakefulness to achieve human diurnality, characterized by a consolidated bout of sleep during night-time and a continuous period of wakefulness during the day. Of prime importance is that the temporal organization of sleep and wakefulness evolves throughout the adult lifespan, leading to higher sleep-wake fragmentation with ageing. The increasing occurrence of daytime napping is the most visible manifestation of this fragmentation. Contrary to the common belief, napping stands as a health risk factor in seniors in epidemiological data. I posit that chronic napping in older people primarily reflects circadian disruption. Based on my preliminary findings, I predict that this disruption will lead to lower cognitive fitness. I further hypothesise that a re-stabilization of circadian sleep-wake organization through a nap prevention intervention will reduce age-related cognitive decline. Characterizing the link between cognitive ageing and the temporal distribution of sleep and wakefulness will not only bring ground-breaking advances at the scientific level, but is also timely in the ageing society. Cognitive decline, as well as inadequately timed sleep, represent dominant determinants of the health span of our fast ageing population and easy implementable intervention programs are urgently needed.

Max ERC Funding

1 499 125 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31

Project acronymCoHuBiCoL

ProjectCounting as a Human Being in the Era of Computational Law

Researcher (PI)Mireille HILDEBRANDT

Host Institution (HI)VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT BRUSSEL

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH2, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryThis project will investigate how the prominence of counting and computation transforms many of the assumptions, operations and outcomes of the law. It targets two types of computational law: artificial legal intelligence or data-driven law (based on machine learning), and cryptographic or code-driven law (based on blockchain technologies). Both disrupt, erode and challenge conventional legal scholarship and legal practice. The core thesis of the research is that the upcoming integration of computational law into mainstream legal practice, could transform the mode of existence of law and notably of the Rule of Law. Such a transformation will affect the nature of legal protection, potentially reducing the capability of individual human beings to invoke legal remedies, restricting or ruling out effective redress. To understand and address this transformation, modern positive law will be analysed as text-driven law, enabling a comparative analysis of text-driven, data-driven and code-driven normativity. The overarching goal is to develop a new hermeneutics for computational law, based on (1) research into the assumptions and (2) the implications of computational law, and on (3) the development of conceptual tools to rethink and reconstruct the Rule of Law in the era of computational law. The intermediate goals are an in-depth assessment of the nature of legal protection in text-driven law, and of the potential for legal protection in data-driven and code-driven law. The new hermeneutics will enable a new practice of interpretation on the cusp of law and computer science. The research methodology is based on legal theory and philosophy of law in close interaction with computer science, integrating key insights into the affordances of computational architectures into legal methodology, thus achieving a pivotal innovation of legal method.

This project will investigate how the prominence of counting and computation transforms many of the assumptions, operations and outcomes of the law. It targets two types of computational law: artificial legal intelligence or data-driven law (based on machine learning), and cryptographic or code-driven law (based on blockchain technologies). Both disrupt, erode and challenge conventional legal scholarship and legal practice. The core thesis of the research is that the upcoming integration of computational law into mainstream legal practice, could transform the mode of existence of law and notably of the Rule of Law. Such a transformation will affect the nature of legal protection, potentially reducing the capability of individual human beings to invoke legal remedies, restricting or ruling out effective redress. To understand and address this transformation, modern positive law will be analysed as text-driven law, enabling a comparative analysis of text-driven, data-driven and code-driven normativity. The overarching goal is to develop a new hermeneutics for computational law, based on (1) research into the assumptions and (2) the implications of computational law, and on (3) the development of conceptual tools to rethink and reconstruct the Rule of Law in the era of computational law. The intermediate goals are an in-depth assessment of the nature of legal protection in text-driven law, and of the potential for legal protection in data-driven and code-driven law. The new hermeneutics will enable a new practice of interpretation on the cusp of law and computer science. The research methodology is based on legal theory and philosophy of law in close interaction with computer science, integrating key insights into the affordances of computational architectures into legal methodology, thus achieving a pivotal innovation of legal method.

Max ERC Funding

2 492 433 €

Duration

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

Project acronymCOLOURMIND

ProjectColouring the Mind: the Impact of Visual Environment on Colour Perception

Researcher (PI)Anna FRANKLIN

Host Institution (HI)THE UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryVisual perception is central to how we think and behave. However, there are major unresolved issues in understanding how the human mind draws on experience to perceive the dynamic and variable world. The COLOURMIND project, led by Franklin, will tackle these crucial issues with an ambitious investigation of the impact of the visual environment on colour perception that will provide a new theoretical framework for the field. The project will ask ground-breaking questions: What aspects of colour perception are affected by the visual environment, such that people from different environments perceive colour differently?; What processes enable colour perception to calibrate to visual experience and what is their nature and scope?; Does colour perception ‘tune-in’ to the visual input experienced during infancy? COLOURMIND will adopt a diverse range of innovative methods to address these questions, and will: i.) investigate the colour perception of people immersed in natural non-industrialised environments in some of the remotest parts of the world to identify the extent to which visual environment shapes colour perception; ii.) use innovative neuroimaging methods to identify how the visual cortex changes in response to chromatic experience; iii.) pioneer the use of ‘Altered-Reality' (next generation virtual reality) to elucidate calibrative processes in colour perception; and iv.) conduct carefully controlled experiments with infants to address the role of development. The cutting-edge questions, innovative approaches and theoretical power of the COLOURMIND project will lead to breakthroughs on issues that are fundamental to understanding the complexity of the human mind (e.g., learning, plasticity and inference; perceptual development; cultural relativity), and findings will have practical application. Overall, the ambitious project will push the frontiers of multidisciplinary research on colour perception, and will resonate throughout the cognitive and social sciences.

Visual perception is central to how we think and behave. However, there are major unresolved issues in understanding how the human mind draws on experience to perceive the dynamic and variable world. The COLOURMIND project, led by Franklin, will tackle these crucial issues with an ambitious investigation of the impact of the visual environment on colour perception that will provide a new theoretical framework for the field. The project will ask ground-breaking questions: What aspects of colour perception are affected by the visual environment, such that people from different environments perceive colour differently?; What processes enable colour perception to calibrate to visual experience and what is their nature and scope?; Does colour perception ‘tune-in’ to the visual input experienced during infancy? COLOURMIND will adopt a diverse range of innovative methods to address these questions, and will: i.) investigate the colour perception of people immersed in natural non-industrialised environments in some of the remotest parts of the world to identify the extent to which visual environment shapes colour perception; ii.) use innovative neuroimaging methods to identify how the visual cortex changes in response to chromatic experience; iii.) pioneer the use of ‘Altered-Reality' (next generation virtual reality) to elucidate calibrative processes in colour perception; and iv.) conduct carefully controlled experiments with infants to address the role of development. The cutting-edge questions, innovative approaches and theoretical power of the COLOURMIND project will lead to breakthroughs on issues that are fundamental to understanding the complexity of the human mind (e.g., learning, plasticity and inference; perceptual development; cultural relativity), and findings will have practical application. Overall, the ambitious project will push the frontiers of multidisciplinary research on colour perception, and will resonate throughout the cognitive and social sciences.

Max ERC Funding

1 999 975 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-07-01, End date: 2023-06-30

Project acronymCOLSOC

ProjectThe Legacy of Colonialism: Origins and Outcomes of Social Protection

Researcher (PI)Carina SCHMITT

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITAET BREMEN

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2017-STG

SummarySocial protection has been one of the most popular instruments for promoting human development across the globe. However, the great majority of the global population is not or only partly covered by social protection. Especially in developing countries it is often the very poorest who do not receive essential social benefits. This is highly problematic since inclusive social protection is assumed to be a key factor for national productivity, global economic growth and domestic stability. Social protection in many developing countries can be traced back to colonial times. Surprisingly, the influence of colonialism has been a blind spot for existing theories and empirical studies of comparative social policy. In this project it is argued that the colonial legacy in terms of the imperial strategy of the colonial power, the characteristics of the colonized society and the interplay between the two is crucial in explaining early and contemporary social protection. Hence, the main objective of this project is to systematically understand how colonialism has shaped the remarkable differences in social protection and its postcolonial outcomes. Given the paucity of our information and understanding of social protection in former colonies, an interactive dataset on the characteristics, origins and outcomes of social protection will be developed including comprehensive data on former British and French colonies from the beginning of the 20th century until today. The dataset will be backed by insights derived from four case studies elucidating the causal mechanisms between the colonial legacy and early and contemporary social protection. The proposed project breaks new ground by improving our understanding of why social protection in some developing countries has led to more inclusive societies while reinforcing existing inequalities in others. Such an understanding is a prerequisite in informing the contemporary struggle against poverty and social inequality.

Social protection has been one of the most popular instruments for promoting human development across the globe. However, the great majority of the global population is not or only partly covered by social protection. Especially in developing countries it is often the very poorest who do not receive essential social benefits. This is highly problematic since inclusive social protection is assumed to be a key factor for national productivity, global economic growth and domestic stability. Social protection in many developing countries can be traced back to colonial times. Surprisingly, the influence of colonialism has been a blind spot for existing theories and empirical studies of comparative social policy. In this project it is argued that the colonial legacy in terms of the imperial strategy of the colonial power, the characteristics of the colonized society and the interplay between the two is crucial in explaining early and contemporary social protection. Hence, the main objective of this project is to systematically understand how colonialism has shaped the remarkable differences in social protection and its postcolonial outcomes. Given the paucity of our information and understanding of social protection in former colonies, an interactive dataset on the characteristics, origins and outcomes of social protection will be developed including comprehensive data on former British and French colonies from the beginning of the 20th century until today. The dataset will be backed by insights derived from four case studies elucidating the causal mechanisms between the colonial legacy and early and contemporary social protection. The proposed project breaks new ground by improving our understanding of why social protection in some developing countries has led to more inclusive societies while reinforcing existing inequalities in others. Such an understanding is a prerequisite in informing the contemporary struggle against poverty and social inequality.

Max ERC Funding

1 486 250 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-04-01, End date: 2023-03-31

Project acronymCOMICS

ProjectChildren in Comics: An Intercultural History from 1865 to Today

Researcher (PI)Maaheen AHMED

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITEIT GENT

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH5, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryOwing to their visual essence and status as a popular, modern medium, comics – newspaper strips, comics magazines and graphic novels – provide valuable insight into the transformation of collective consciousness. This project advances the hypothesis that children in comics are distinctive embodiments of the complex experience of modernity, channeling and tempering modern anxieties and incarnating the freedom denied to adults. In testing this hypothesis, the project constructs the first intercultural history of children in European comics, tracing the changing conceptualizations of child protagonists in popular comics for both children and adults from the mid-19th century to the present. In doing so, it takes key points in European history as well as the history of comics into account.
Assembling a team of six multilingual researchers, the project uses an interdisciplinary methodology combining comics studies and childhood studies while also incorporating specific insights from cultural studies (history of family life, history of public life, history of the body, affect theory and scholarship on the carnivalesque). This enables the project to analyze the transposition of modern anxieties, conceptualizations of childishness, child-adult power relations, notions of liberty, visualizations of the body, family life, school and public life as well as the presence of affects such as nostalgia and happiness in comics starring children.
The project thus opens up a new field of research lying at the intersection of comics studies and childhood studies and illustrates its potential. In studying popular but often overlooked comics, the project provides crucial historical and analytical material that will shape future comics criticism and the fields associated with childhood studies. Furthermore, the project’s outreach activities will increase collective knowledge about comic strips, which form an important, increasingly visible part of cultural heritage.

Owing to their visual essence and status as a popular, modern medium, comics – newspaper strips, comics magazines and graphic novels – provide valuable insight into the transformation of collective consciousness. This project advances the hypothesis that children in comics are distinctive embodiments of the complex experience of modernity, channeling and tempering modern anxieties and incarnating the freedom denied to adults. In testing this hypothesis, the project constructs the first intercultural history of children in European comics, tracing the changing conceptualizations of child protagonists in popular comics for both children and adults from the mid-19th century to the present. In doing so, it takes key points in European history as well as the history of comics into account.
Assembling a team of six multilingual researchers, the project uses an interdisciplinary methodology combining comics studies and childhood studies while also incorporating specific insights from cultural studies (history of family life, history of public life, history of the body, affect theory and scholarship on the carnivalesque). This enables the project to analyze the transposition of modern anxieties, conceptualizations of childishness, child-adult power relations, notions of liberty, visualizations of the body, family life, school and public life as well as the presence of affects such as nostalgia and happiness in comics starring children.
The project thus opens up a new field of research lying at the intersection of comics studies and childhood studies and illustrates its potential. In studying popular but often overlooked comics, the project provides crucial historical and analytical material that will shape future comics criticism and the fields associated with childhood studies. Furthermore, the project’s outreach activities will increase collective knowledge about comic strips, which form an important, increasingly visible part of cultural heritage.

Max ERC Funding

1 452 500 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-10-01, End date: 2023-09-30

Project acronymCONNEC

ProjectCONNECTED CLERICS. BUILDING A UNIVERSAL CHURCH IN THE LATE ANTIQUE WEST (380-604 CE)

Researcher (PI)David NATAL VILLAZALA

Host Institution (HI)ROYAL HOLLOWAY AND BEDFORD NEW COLLEGE

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryIn 380 CE, the Emperor Theodosius (d. 395) ordered all Roman subjects to follow Catholic Christianity and limited imperial patronage to the Catholic Church. Theodosius was the last ruler to reign over a united empire. At his death the realm was divided into two halves, and by the end of Gregory the Great’s papacy (d. 604), a mosaic of independent kingdoms had replaced the western part of the empire. Yet despite the political division, during this period western clerics built a supra-regional ecclesiastical structure with substantial levels of hierarchy and cohesion.
Up to the 1950s historians have largely conceived of these ecclesiastical institutions as organizations with widely accepted power. More recent scholarship, however, has revealed the social origin and fallibility of clerical authority. Nonetheless, this move away from the study of institutions has left unanswered the fundamental questions of how a ‘universal’ church was built at a time of political fragmentation, and how the transition from informal mutual aid to more formal hierarchical structures of law- and policy-making came about.
With innovative methods of social inquiry we can offer new answers to these historiographical questions. Our project (CONNEC) will use social network analysis and new institutional theory to trace four processes: how clerical networks adapted to the new secular contexts, how these interactions shaped the development of ecclesiastical law, how clerics constructed and disseminated discourses that supported different structures of the church, and how networks fostered compliance and a sense of accountability among clerics. CONNEC’s use of state-of-the-art methods will be enhanced by the implementation of cutting-edge digital technologies, adapting network analysis software for late antique sources. By bringing together digital tools with qualitative textual analysis, CONNEC will provide a more nuanced understanding of a key process of world history.

In 380 CE, the Emperor Theodosius (d. 395) ordered all Roman subjects to follow Catholic Christianity and limited imperial patronage to the Catholic Church. Theodosius was the last ruler to reign over a united empire. At his death the realm was divided into two halves, and by the end of Gregory the Great’s papacy (d. 604), a mosaic of independent kingdoms had replaced the western part of the empire. Yet despite the political division, during this period western clerics built a supra-regional ecclesiastical structure with substantial levels of hierarchy and cohesion.
Up to the 1950s historians have largely conceived of these ecclesiastical institutions as organizations with widely accepted power. More recent scholarship, however, has revealed the social origin and fallibility of clerical authority. Nonetheless, this move away from the study of institutions has left unanswered the fundamental questions of how a ‘universal’ church was built at a time of political fragmentation, and how the transition from informal mutual aid to more formal hierarchical structures of law- and policy-making came about.
With innovative methods of social inquiry we can offer new answers to these historiographical questions. Our project (CONNEC) will use social network analysis and new institutional theory to trace four processes: how clerical networks adapted to the new secular contexts, how these interactions shaped the development of ecclesiastical law, how clerics constructed and disseminated discourses that supported different structures of the church, and how networks fostered compliance and a sense of accountability among clerics. CONNEC’s use of state-of-the-art methods will be enhanced by the implementation of cutting-edge digital technologies, adapting network analysis software for late antique sources. By bringing together digital tools with qualitative textual analysis, CONNEC will provide a more nuanced understanding of a key process of world history.

Max ERC Funding

1 465 316 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31

Project acronymCONT-END

ProjectAttempts to Control the End of Life in People with Dementia: Two-level Approach to Examine Controversies

Researcher (PI)Jenny VAN DER STEEN

Host Institution (HI)ACADEMISCH ZIEKENHUIS LEIDEN

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryIn dementia at the end of life, cognitive and physical decline imply that control is typically lost. CONT-END will examine control in the context of three emerging interventions which contain a controversial element of striving for control in the process of dying with dementia: advance care planning of the end of life, use of new technology to monitor symptoms when unable to self-report, and euthanasia. To perform outstanding research, the proposed research examines control at the level of clinical practice, but also at the level of end-of-life research practice. The latter provides ample opportunities for researchers to control the research process. That is, research designs are often flexible and we will study if and how this impacts research in an emotionally charged area. I will take an empirical mixed-methods approach to study the two practices in parallel. The work is organised in three related Work Packages around three research questions. (1) In a 6-country study, I will examine if and when people with dementia, family caregivers and physicians (900 respondents) find the interventions, shown on video, acceptable. (2) A cluster-randomised 3-armed controlled trial in 279 patients and their family caregivers assesses effects of two types of advance care planning differing in level of control (detailed advance treatment orders versus goal setting and coping based) on outcomes ranging from favourable to less favourable, and whether effects differ in subgroups. Cases in which the technology is preferred or applied are observed. (3) Ethnographic fieldwork in two different end-of-life research practices and a Delphi study to synthesize CONT-END’s findings assess how researchers shape findings. This greatly improves the quality of CONT-END and provides the input to develop new methodology for improving research quality and integrity.

In dementia at the end of life, cognitive and physical decline imply that control is typically lost. CONT-END will examine control in the context of three emerging interventions which contain a controversial element of striving for control in the process of dying with dementia: advance care planning of the end of life, use of new technology to monitor symptoms when unable to self-report, and euthanasia. To perform outstanding research, the proposed research examines control at the level of clinical practice, but also at the level of end-of-life research practice. The latter provides ample opportunities for researchers to control the research process. That is, research designs are often flexible and we will study if and how this impacts research in an emotionally charged area. I will take an empirical mixed-methods approach to study the two practices in parallel. The work is organised in three related Work Packages around three research questions. (1) In a 6-country study, I will examine if and when people with dementia, family caregivers and physicians (900 respondents) find the interventions, shown on video, acceptable. (2) A cluster-randomised 3-armed controlled trial in 279 patients and their family caregivers assesses effects of two types of advance care planning differing in level of control (detailed advance treatment orders versus goal setting and coping based) on outcomes ranging from favourable to less favourable, and whether effects differ in subgroups. Cases in which the technology is preferred or applied are observed. (3) Ethnographic fieldwork in two different end-of-life research practices and a Delphi study to synthesize CONT-END’s findings assess how researchers shape findings. This greatly improves the quality of CONT-END and provides the input to develop new methodology for improving research quality and integrity.

SummaryMusic performance is considered by many to be one of the most breath taking feats of human intelligence. That music performance is a creative act is no longer a disputed fact, but the very nature of this creative work remains illusive. Taking the view that the creative work of performance is the making and shaping of music structures, and that this creative thinking is a form of problem solving, COSMOS proposes an integrated programme of research to transform our understanding of the human experience of performed music, which is almost all music that we hear, and of the creativity of music performance, which addresses how music is made. The research themes are as follows: i) to find new ways to represent, explore, and talk about performance; ii) to harness volunteer thinking (citizen science) for music performance research by focussing on structures experienced and problem solving; iii) to create sandbox environments to experiment with making performed structures; iv) to create theoretical frameworks to discover the reasoning behind the structures perceived and made; and, v) to foster community engagement by training experts to provide feedback on structure solutions so as to increase public understanding of the creative work in music performance. Analysis of the perceived and designed structures will be based on a novel duality paradigm that turns conventional computational music structure analysis on its head to reverse engineer why a perceiver or a performer chooses a particular structure. Embedded in the approach is the use of computational thinking to optimise representations and theories to ensure accuracy, robustness, efficiency, and scalability. The PI is an established performer and a leading authority in music representation, music information research, and music perception and cognition. The project will have far reaching impact, reconfiguring expert and public views of music performance and time-varying music-like sequences such as cardiac arrhythmia.

Music performance is considered by many to be one of the most breath taking feats of human intelligence. That music performance is a creative act is no longer a disputed fact, but the very nature of this creative work remains illusive. Taking the view that the creative work of performance is the making and shaping of music structures, and that this creative thinking is a form of problem solving, COSMOS proposes an integrated programme of research to transform our understanding of the human experience of performed music, which is almost all music that we hear, and of the creativity of music performance, which addresses how music is made. The research themes are as follows: i) to find new ways to represent, explore, and talk about performance; ii) to harness volunteer thinking (citizen science) for music performance research by focussing on structures experienced and problem solving; iii) to create sandbox environments to experiment with making performed structures; iv) to create theoretical frameworks to discover the reasoning behind the structures perceived and made; and, v) to foster community engagement by training experts to provide feedback on structure solutions so as to increase public understanding of the creative work in music performance. Analysis of the perceived and designed structures will be based on a novel duality paradigm that turns conventional computational music structure analysis on its head to reverse engineer why a perceiver or a performer chooses a particular structure. Embedded in the approach is the use of computational thinking to optimise representations and theories to ensure accuracy, robustness, efficiency, and scalability. The PI is an established performer and a leading authority in music representation, music information research, and music perception and cognition. The project will have far reaching impact, reconfiguring expert and public views of music performance and time-varying music-like sequences such as cardiac arrhythmia.

Max ERC Funding

2 495 776 €

Duration

Start date: 2019-06-01, End date: 2024-05-31

Project acronymCOVOPRIM

ProjectA Comparative Study of Voice Perception in Primates

Researcher (PI)Pascal Georges BELIN

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITE D'AIX MARSEILLE

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH4, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryWith COVOPRIM I propose to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of one often overlooked component of speech and language: voice perception. Perceptual and neural mechanisms of voice perception will be compared between humans, macaques and marmosets –two highly vocal and extensively studied monkey species–to quantify cross-species differences and infer mechanisms potentially inherited from a common ancestor. Two key building blocks of vocal communication detailed in my past research in humans will be compared across species: (1) the sensitivity to conspecific vocalizations, and (2) the processing of speaker/caller identity.
COVOPRIM is organized in three workpackages (WPs). WP1 will use large-scale behavioural testing based on ad-lib access of monkeys to automated test systems (following the highly successful model developed locally with baboons). Two main behavioural experiments will establish psychometric response functions for robust cross-species comparison. WP2 will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure cerebral activity during auditory stimulation in the three species. I will compare across brains the organization of what I hypothesize constitutes a “voice patch system” similar to the face patch system of visual cortex and broadly conserved in primates. I will also take advantage of the monkey models and use long-term, subject-specific enrichments of the auditory stimulation to probe the experience-dependence of neural coding in the voice patch system—an outstanding issue in human voice perception. WP3 will use fMRI-guided microstimulation in monkeys and transcranial magnetic stimulation in humans to establish the effective connectivity within the voice patch system and test the causal relation between voice patch neuronal activity and voice perception behaviour.
COVOPRIM is expected to generate considerable advances in our understanding of the recent evolution in primates of the perceptual and neural mechanisms of voice perception.

With COVOPRIM I propose to reconstruct the recent evolutionary history of one often overlooked component of speech and language: voice perception. Perceptual and neural mechanisms of voice perception will be compared between humans, macaques and marmosets –two highly vocal and extensively studied monkey species–to quantify cross-species differences and infer mechanisms potentially inherited from a common ancestor. Two key building blocks of vocal communication detailed in my past research in humans will be compared across species: (1) the sensitivity to conspecific vocalizations, and (2) the processing of speaker/caller identity.
COVOPRIM is organized in three workpackages (WPs). WP1 will use large-scale behavioural testing based on ad-lib access of monkeys to automated test systems (following the highly successful model developed locally with baboons). Two main behavioural experiments will establish psychometric response functions for robust cross-species comparison. WP2 will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure cerebral activity during auditory stimulation in the three species. I will compare across brains the organization of what I hypothesize constitutes a “voice patch system” similar to the face patch system of visual cortex and broadly conserved in primates. I will also take advantage of the monkey models and use long-term, subject-specific enrichments of the auditory stimulation to probe the experience-dependence of neural coding in the voice patch system—an outstanding issue in human voice perception. WP3 will use fMRI-guided microstimulation in monkeys and transcranial magnetic stimulation in humans to establish the effective connectivity within the voice patch system and test the causal relation between voice patch neuronal activity and voice perception behaviour.
COVOPRIM is expected to generate considerable advances in our understanding of the recent evolution in primates of the perceptual and neural mechanisms of voice perception.

Max ERC Funding

2 900 000 €

Duration

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

Project acronymCRAACE

ProjectContinuity and Rupture in Central European Art and Architecture, 1918-1939

Researcher (PI)Matthew RAMPLEY

Host Institution (HI)Masarykova univerzita

Call DetailsAdvanced Grant (AdG), SH5, ERC-2017-ADG

SummaryWhen new political elites and social structures emerge out of a historical rupture, how are art and architecture affected? In 1918 the political map of central Europe was redrawn as a result of the collapse of Austria-Hungary, marking a new era for the region. Through comparative analysis of the visual arts in 3 states built on the ruins of the Habsburg Empire (Austria, Hungary and [former] Czechoslovakia), this project examines how such political discontinuity affected art and architecture between 1918 and 1939. The project is organised into 4 themes, each resulting in a monograph:
1. Vernacular modernisms, nostalgia and the avant-garde
2. Presenting the state: world fairs and exhibitionary cultures
3. Piety, reaction and renewal
4. Contested histories: monuments, memory and representations of the historical past
It is the first systematic and comprehensive trans-national study of this type, based on the claim that the successor states to Austria-Hungary belonged to a common cultural space informed by the shared memory of the long years of Habsburg society and culture. The project focuses on the contradictory ways that visual arts of artists and architects in central Europe adapted to and tried to shape new socio-political circumstances in the light of the past. The project thus examines the long shadow of the Habsburg Empire over the art and culture of the twentieth century.
The project also considers the impact of the political and ideological imperatives of the three successor states on the visual arts; how did governments treat the past? Did they encourage a sense of historical caesura or look to the past for legitimation? How did artists and architects respond to such new impulses? In answering these questions the project analyses the conflicts between avant-gardes and more conservative artistic movements; the role of the visual arts in interwar memory politics; the place of art in the nexus of religion, national and state identity.

When new political elites and social structures emerge out of a historical rupture, how are art and architecture affected? In 1918 the political map of central Europe was redrawn as a result of the collapse of Austria-Hungary, marking a new era for the region. Through comparative analysis of the visual arts in 3 states built on the ruins of the Habsburg Empire (Austria, Hungary and [former] Czechoslovakia), this project examines how such political discontinuity affected art and architecture between 1918 and 1939. The project is organised into 4 themes, each resulting in a monograph:
1. Vernacular modernisms, nostalgia and the avant-garde
2. Presenting the state: world fairs and exhibitionary cultures
3. Piety, reaction and renewal
4. Contested histories: monuments, memory and representations of the historical past
It is the first systematic and comprehensive trans-national study of this type, based on the claim that the successor states to Austria-Hungary belonged to a common cultural space informed by the shared memory of the long years of Habsburg society and culture. The project focuses on the contradictory ways that visual arts of artists and architects in central Europe adapted to and tried to shape new socio-political circumstances in the light of the past. The project thus examines the long shadow of the Habsburg Empire over the art and culture of the twentieth century.
The project also considers the impact of the political and ideological imperatives of the three successor states on the visual arts; how did governments treat the past? Did they encourage a sense of historical caesura or look to the past for legitimation? How did artists and architects respond to such new impulses? In answering these questions the project analyses the conflicts between avant-gardes and more conservative artistic movements; the role of the visual arts in interwar memory politics; the place of art in the nexus of religion, national and state identity.

Max ERC Funding

2 468 359 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Project acronymCRIMETIME

ProjectCrime and Time: How short-term mindsets encourage crime and how the future self can prevent it

Researcher (PI)Jean-Louis VAN GELDER

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH3, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryWhy are some people more likely to commit crime than others? Answers to this question, which is at the heart of criminology, can be grouped into two broad views. On the one hand, dispositional perspectives argue that stable factors within the individual, such as lack of self-control, lie at the roots of criminal conduct. Sociogenic perspectives, on the other hand, put the locus of study outside the individual and point towards factors such as rough neighborhoods, parental unemployment, and deviant peers, as the main causes of crime. In spite of ample empirical support for both views, there has been relatively little constructive engagement with each other.
Capitalizing on my multidisciplinary background and drawing on social psychology and evolutionary theory, I outline a new perspective on criminal behavior –Time Frame Theory (TFT)– that integrates both views. TFT is premised on the idea that short-term mindsets encourage crime and specifies how both individual dispositions and sociogenic variables can encourage such mindsets. I test this theory using a combination of longitudinal research and behavioral field experiments.
Besides aiming to mend the current theoretical disconnect in criminology and providing the foundation for a common paradigm, the proposed research program goes a step further by using TFT as the basis for a behavioral intervention to reduce crime. Building on recent pilot research, I use virtual reality technology in combination with a smartphone application to instill a future-oriented mindset in offenders. I am convinced that this combination of novel theory and innovative methodology may lead not only to a breakthrough in our understanding of delinquency but can also provide a blueprint for a scalable and evidence-based intervention to reduce it.

Why are some people more likely to commit crime than others? Answers to this question, which is at the heart of criminology, can be grouped into two broad views. On the one hand, dispositional perspectives argue that stable factors within the individual, such as lack of self-control, lie at the roots of criminal conduct. Sociogenic perspectives, on the other hand, put the locus of study outside the individual and point towards factors such as rough neighborhoods, parental unemployment, and deviant peers, as the main causes of crime. In spite of ample empirical support for both views, there has been relatively little constructive engagement with each other.
Capitalizing on my multidisciplinary background and drawing on social psychology and evolutionary theory, I outline a new perspective on criminal behavior –Time Frame Theory (TFT)– that integrates both views. TFT is premised on the idea that short-term mindsets encourage crime and specifies how both individual dispositions and sociogenic variables can encourage such mindsets. I test this theory using a combination of longitudinal research and behavioral field experiments.
Besides aiming to mend the current theoretical disconnect in criminology and providing the foundation for a common paradigm, the proposed research program goes a step further by using TFT as the basis for a behavioral intervention to reduce crime. Building on recent pilot research, I use virtual reality technology in combination with a smartphone application to instill a future-oriented mindset in offenders. I am convinced that this combination of novel theory and innovative methodology may lead not only to a breakthrough in our understanding of delinquency but can also provide a blueprint for a scalable and evidence-based intervention to reduce it.

SummaryCryopreservation practices are an essential dimension of contemporary life sciences. They make possible the freezing and storage of cells, tissues and other organic materials at very low temperatures and the subsequent thawing of these at a future date without apparent loss of vitality. Although cryotechnologies are fundamental to reproductive technologies, regenerative medicine, transplantation surgery and conservation biology, they have largely escaped scholarly attention in science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology.
CRYOSOCIETIES explores the crucial role of cryopreservation in affecting temporalities and the concept of life. The project is based on the thesis that in contemporary societies, cryopreservation practices bring into existence a new form of life: “suspended life”. “Suspended life” enables vital processes to be kept in a liminal state in which biological substances are neither fully alive nor dead. CRYOSOCIETIES generates profound empirical knowledge about the creation of “suspended life” through three ethnographic studies that investigate various sites of cryopreservation. A fourth subproject develops a complex theoretical framework in order to grasp the temporal and spatial regimes of the different cryopractices.
CRYOSOCIETIES breaks analytical ground in three important ways. First, the project provides the first systematic and comprehensive empirical study of “suspended life” and deepens our knowledge of how cryopreservation works in different settings. Secondly, it undertakes pioneering work on cryopreservation practices in Europe, generating novel ways of understanding how “suspended life” is assembled, negotiated and mobilised in European societies. Thirdly, CRYOSOCIETIES develops an innovative methodological and theoretical framework in order to address the relationality and materiality of cryopreservation practices and to explore the concept of vitality and the politics of life in the 21st century.

Cryopreservation practices are an essential dimension of contemporary life sciences. They make possible the freezing and storage of cells, tissues and other organic materials at very low temperatures and the subsequent thawing of these at a future date without apparent loss of vitality. Although cryotechnologies are fundamental to reproductive technologies, regenerative medicine, transplantation surgery and conservation biology, they have largely escaped scholarly attention in science and technology studies, anthropology and sociology.
CRYOSOCIETIES explores the crucial role of cryopreservation in affecting temporalities and the concept of life. The project is based on the thesis that in contemporary societies, cryopreservation practices bring into existence a new form of life: “suspended life”. “Suspended life” enables vital processes to be kept in a liminal state in which biological substances are neither fully alive nor dead. CRYOSOCIETIES generates profound empirical knowledge about the creation of “suspended life” through three ethnographic studies that investigate various sites of cryopreservation. A fourth subproject develops a complex theoretical framework in order to grasp the temporal and spatial regimes of the different cryopractices.
CRYOSOCIETIES breaks analytical ground in three important ways. First, the project provides the first systematic and comprehensive empirical study of “suspended life” and deepens our knowledge of how cryopreservation works in different settings. Secondly, it undertakes pioneering work on cryopreservation practices in Europe, generating novel ways of understanding how “suspended life” is assembled, negotiated and mobilised in European societies. Thirdly, CRYOSOCIETIES develops an innovative methodological and theoretical framework in order to address the relationality and materiality of cryopreservation practices and to explore the concept of vitality and the politics of life in the 21st century.

Max ERC Funding

2 497 587 €

Duration

Start date: 2019-04-01, End date: 2024-03-31

Project acronymCT

Project‘Challenging Time(s)’ – A New Approach to Written Sources for Ancient Egyptian Chronology

Researcher (PI)Roman GUNDACKER

Host Institution (HI)OESTERREICHISCHE AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH6, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryThe chronology of ancient Egypt is a golden thread for the memory of early civilisation. It is not only the scaffolding of four millennia of Egyptian history, but also one of the pillars of the chronology of the entire ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean. The basic division of Egyptian history into 31 dynasties was introduced by Manetho, an Egyptian historian (c. 280 BC) writing in Greek for the Ptolemaic kings. Despite the fact that this scheme was adopted by Egyptologists 200 years ago and remains in use until today, there has never been an in-depth analysis of Manetho’s kinglist and of the names in it. Until now, identifying the Greek renderings of royal names with their hieroglyphic counterparts was more or less educated guesswork. It is thus essential to introduce the principles of textual criticism, to evaluate royal names on a firm linguistic basis and to provide for the first time ever an Egyptological commentary on Manetho’s kinglist. Just like Manetho did long ago, now it is necessary to gather all inscriptional evidence on Egyptian history: dated inscriptions, biographic and prosopographic data of royalty and commoners, genuine Egyptian kinglists and annals. These data must be critically evaluated in context, their assignment to specific reigns must be reconsidered, and genealogies and sequences of officials must be reviewed. The results are not only important for Egyptian historical chronology and for our understanding of the Egyptian perception of history, but also for the interpretation of chronological data gained from archaeological excavations (material culture) and sciences (14C dates, which are interpreted on the basis of historical chronology, e.g., via ‘Bayesian modelling’). The applicant has already shown the significance of this approach in pilot studies on the pyramid age. Further work in cooperation with international specialists will thus shed new light on ancient sources in order to determine the chronology of early civilisation.

The chronology of ancient Egypt is a golden thread for the memory of early civilisation. It is not only the scaffolding of four millennia of Egyptian history, but also one of the pillars of the chronology of the entire ancient Near East and eastern Mediterranean. The basic division of Egyptian history into 31 dynasties was introduced by Manetho, an Egyptian historian (c. 280 BC) writing in Greek for the Ptolemaic kings. Despite the fact that this scheme was adopted by Egyptologists 200 years ago and remains in use until today, there has never been an in-depth analysis of Manetho’s kinglist and of the names in it. Until now, identifying the Greek renderings of royal names with their hieroglyphic counterparts was more or less educated guesswork. It is thus essential to introduce the principles of textual criticism, to evaluate royal names on a firm linguistic basis and to provide for the first time ever an Egyptological commentary on Manetho’s kinglist. Just like Manetho did long ago, now it is necessary to gather all inscriptional evidence on Egyptian history: dated inscriptions, biographic and prosopographic data of royalty and commoners, genuine Egyptian kinglists and annals. These data must be critically evaluated in context, their assignment to specific reigns must be reconsidered, and genealogies and sequences of officials must be reviewed. The results are not only important for Egyptian historical chronology and for our understanding of the Egyptian perception of history, but also for the interpretation of chronological data gained from archaeological excavations (material culture) and sciences (14C dates, which are interpreted on the basis of historical chronology, e.g., via ‘Bayesian modelling’). The applicant has already shown the significance of this approach in pilot studies on the pyramid age. Further work in cooperation with international specialists will thus shed new light on ancient sources in order to determine the chronology of early civilisation.

Max ERC Funding

1 499 992 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-03-01, End date: 2023-02-28

Project acronymCtrl-ImpAct

ProjectControl of impulsive action

Researcher (PI)Frederick Leon Julien VERBRUGGEN

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITEIT GENT

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryAdaptive behaviour is typically attributed to an executive-control system that allows people to regulate impulsive actions and to fulfil long-term goals instead. Failures to regulate impulsive actions have been associated with a variety of clinical and behavioural disorders. Therefore, establishing a good understanding of impulse-control mechanisms and how to improve them could be hugely beneficial for both individuals and society at large. Yet many fundamental questions remain unanswered. This stems from a narrow focus on reactive inhibitory control and well-practiced actions. To make significant progress, we need to develop new models that integrate different aspects of impulsive action and executive control. The proposed research program aims to answer five fundamental questions. (1) Can novel impulsive actions arise during task-preparation stages?; (2) What is the role of negative emotions in the origin and control of impulsive actions?; (3) How does learning modulate impulsive behaviour?; (4) When are impulsive actions (dys)functional?; and (5) How is variation in state impulsivity associated with trait impulsivity?
To answer these questions, we will use carefully designed behavioural paradigms, cognitive neuroscience techniques (TMS & EEG), physiological measures (e.g. facial EMG), and mathematical modelling of decision-making to specify the origin and control of impulsive actions. Our ultimate goal is to transform the impulsive action field by replacing the currently dominant ‘inhibitory control’ models of impulsive action with detailed multifaceted models that can explain impulsivity and control across time and space. Developing a new behavioural model of impulsive action will also contribute to a better understanding of the causes of individual differences in impulsivity and the many disorders associated with impulse-control deficits.

Adaptive behaviour is typically attributed to an executive-control system that allows people to regulate impulsive actions and to fulfil long-term goals instead. Failures to regulate impulsive actions have been associated with a variety of clinical and behavioural disorders. Therefore, establishing a good understanding of impulse-control mechanisms and how to improve them could be hugely beneficial for both individuals and society at large. Yet many fundamental questions remain unanswered. This stems from a narrow focus on reactive inhibitory control and well-practiced actions. To make significant progress, we need to develop new models that integrate different aspects of impulsive action and executive control. The proposed research program aims to answer five fundamental questions. (1) Can novel impulsive actions arise during task-preparation stages?; (2) What is the role of negative emotions in the origin and control of impulsive actions?; (3) How does learning modulate impulsive behaviour?; (4) When are impulsive actions (dys)functional?; and (5) How is variation in state impulsivity associated with trait impulsivity?
To answer these questions, we will use carefully designed behavioural paradigms, cognitive neuroscience techniques (TMS & EEG), physiological measures (e.g. facial EMG), and mathematical modelling of decision-making to specify the origin and control of impulsive actions. Our ultimate goal is to transform the impulsive action field by replacing the currently dominant ‘inhibitory control’ models of impulsive action with detailed multifaceted models that can explain impulsivity and control across time and space. Developing a new behavioural model of impulsive action will also contribute to a better understanding of the causes of individual differences in impulsivity and the many disorders associated with impulse-control deficits.

Max ERC Funding

1 998 438 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-06-01, End date: 2023-05-31

Project acronymCUREORCURSE

ProjectNon-elected politics.Cure or Curse for the Crisis of Representative Democracy?

Researcher (PI)Jean-Benoit PILET

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITE LIBRE DE BRUXELLES

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryEvidence of a growing disengagement of citizens from politics is multiplying. Electoral turnout reaches historically low levels. Anti-establishment and populist parties are on the rise. Fewer and fewer Europeans trust their representative institutions. In response, we have observed a multiplication of institutional reforms aimed at revitalizing representative democracy. Two in particular stand out: the delegation of some political decision-making powers to (1) selected citizens and to (2) selected experts. But there is a paradox in attempting to cure the crisis of representative democracy by introducing such reforms. In representative democracy, control over political decision-making is vested in elected representatives. Delegating political decision-making to selected experts/citizens is at odds with this definition. It empowers the non-elected. If these reforms show that politics could work without elected officials, could we really expect that citizens’ support for representative democracy would be boosted and that citizens would re-engage with representative politics? In that sense, would it be a cure for the crisis of representative democracy, or rather a curse? Our central hypothesis is that there is no universal and univocal healing (or harming) effect of non-elected politics on support for representative democracy. In order to verify it, I propose to collect data across Europe on three elements: (1) a detailed study of the preferences of Europeans on how democracy should work and on institutional reforms towards non-elected politics, (2) a comprehensive inventory of all actual cases of empowerment of citizens and experts implemented across Europe since 2000, and (3) an analysis of the impact of exposure to non-elected politics on citizens’ attitudes towards representative democracy. An innovative combination of online survey experiments and of panel surveys will be used to answer this topical research question with far-reaching societal implication.

Evidence of a growing disengagement of citizens from politics is multiplying. Electoral turnout reaches historically low levels. Anti-establishment and populist parties are on the rise. Fewer and fewer Europeans trust their representative institutions. In response, we have observed a multiplication of institutional reforms aimed at revitalizing representative democracy. Two in particular stand out: the delegation of some political decision-making powers to (1) selected citizens and to (2) selected experts. But there is a paradox in attempting to cure the crisis of representative democracy by introducing such reforms. In representative democracy, control over political decision-making is vested in elected representatives. Delegating political decision-making to selected experts/citizens is at odds with this definition. It empowers the non-elected. If these reforms show that politics could work without elected officials, could we really expect that citizens’ support for representative democracy would be boosted and that citizens would re-engage with representative politics? In that sense, would it be a cure for the crisis of representative democracy, or rather a curse? Our central hypothesis is that there is no universal and univocal healing (or harming) effect of non-elected politics on support for representative democracy. In order to verify it, I propose to collect data across Europe on three elements: (1) a detailed study of the preferences of Europeans on how democracy should work and on institutional reforms towards non-elected politics, (2) a comprehensive inventory of all actual cases of empowerment of citizens and experts implemented across Europe since 2000, and (3) an analysis of the impact of exposure to non-elected politics on citizens’ attitudes towards representative democracy. An innovative combination of online survey experiments and of panel surveys will be used to answer this topical research question with far-reaching societal implication.

Max ERC Funding

1 981 589 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2023-08-31

Project acronymDARE2APPROACH

ProjectDare to Approach: A Neurocognitive Approach to Alleviating Persistent Avoidance in Anxiety Disorders

Researcher (PI)karin ROELOFS

Host Institution (HI)STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH4, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryHow did three soldiers override their initial freezing response to overpower an armed terrorist in the Thalys-train to Paris in 2015? This question is relevant for anyone aiming to optimize approach-avoidance (AA) decisions during threat. It is particularly relevant for patients with anxiety disorders whose persistent avoidance is key to the maintenance of their anxiety.
Computational psychiatry has made great progress in formalizing how we make (mal)adaptive decisions. Current models, however, largely ignore the transient psychophysiological state of the decision maker. Parasympathetic state and flexibility in switching between para- and sympathetic states are directly related to freezing, and are known to bias AA-decisions toward avoidance. The central aim of this research program is to forge a mechanistic understanding of how we compute AA-decisions on the basis of those psychophysiological states, and to identify alterations in anxiety patients in order to guide new personalized neurocognitive interventions into their persistent avoidance.
I will develop a neurocomputational model of AA-decisions that accounts for transient psychophysiological states, in order to define which decision parameters are altered in active and passive avoidance in anxiety. I will test causal premises of the model using state-of-the-art techniques, including pharmacological and electrophysiological interventions. Based on these insights I will for the first time apply personalized brain stimulation to anxiety patients.
Clinically, this project should open the way to effective intervention with fearful avoidance in anxiety disorders that rank among the most common, costly and persistent mental disorders. Theoretically, conceptualizing transient psychophysiological states as causal factor in AA-decision models is essential to understanding passive and active avoidance. Optimizing AA-decisions also holds broad societal relevance given currently increased fearful avoidance of outgroups.

How did three soldiers override their initial freezing response to overpower an armed terrorist in the Thalys-train to Paris in 2015? This question is relevant for anyone aiming to optimize approach-avoidance (AA) decisions during threat. It is particularly relevant for patients with anxiety disorders whose persistent avoidance is key to the maintenance of their anxiety.
Computational psychiatry has made great progress in formalizing how we make (mal)adaptive decisions. Current models, however, largely ignore the transient psychophysiological state of the decision maker. Parasympathetic state and flexibility in switching between para- and sympathetic states are directly related to freezing, and are known to bias AA-decisions toward avoidance. The central aim of this research program is to forge a mechanistic understanding of how we compute AA-decisions on the basis of those psychophysiological states, and to identify alterations in anxiety patients in order to guide new personalized neurocognitive interventions into their persistent avoidance.
I will develop a neurocomputational model of AA-decisions that accounts for transient psychophysiological states, in order to define which decision parameters are altered in active and passive avoidance in anxiety. I will test causal premises of the model using state-of-the-art techniques, including pharmacological and electrophysiological interventions. Based on these insights I will for the first time apply personalized brain stimulation to anxiety patients.
Clinically, this project should open the way to effective intervention with fearful avoidance in anxiety disorders that rank among the most common, costly and persistent mental disorders. Theoretically, conceptualizing transient psychophysiological states as causal factor in AA-decision models is essential to understanding passive and active avoidance. Optimizing AA-decisions also holds broad societal relevance given currently increased fearful avoidance of outgroups.

Max ERC Funding

2 000 000 €

Duration

Start date: 2019-01-01, End date: 2023-12-31

Project acronymDATAJUSTICE

ProjectData Justice: Understanding datafication in relation to social justice

Researcher (PI)Lina Maria Vendela DENCIK

Host Institution (HI)CARDIFF UNIVERSITY

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH3, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryThis project explores the meaning of social justice in an age of datafication. It is premised on two significant developments: 1) the shift to a focus on the collection and processing of massive amounts of data across social life and 2) the increasing concern with the societal implications of such processes. Whilst initial concern with the technical ability to ‘datafy’ and collect information on ever-more social activity focused on surveillance and privacy, increasing emphasis is being placed on the fact that data processes are not ‘flat’ and do not implicate everyone in the same way, but, rather, are part of a system of ‘social sorting’, creating new categories of citizens, and premised on an emerging order of ‘have’ and ‘have nots’ between data profilers and data subjects. In such a context, questions of social justice and datafication require detailed study. This project frames this research agenda around the notion of ‘data justice’. It will provide a European framework of study and take a holistic approach by situating research on data processes in the context of a) the concrete experiences and practices of particular communities; b) technological analyses of data sources, algorithmic process and data output; c) policy frameworks that relate to the interplay between digital rights and social and economic rights; and d) conceptual engagement with new social stratifications emerging with datafication. The project is ground-breaking in five different respects: i) it conceptually advances the meaning of social justice in a datafied society; ii) it shifts and challenges dominant understandings of data by highlighting its relation to social and economic rights; iii) it addresses an uncharted but rapidly growing response to datafication in civil society; iv) it breaks down disciplinary boundaries in understandings of technology, power, politics and social change; and v) it pursues a combination of engaged research and socio-technical modes of investigation.

This project explores the meaning of social justice in an age of datafication. It is premised on two significant developments: 1) the shift to a focus on the collection and processing of massive amounts of data across social life and 2) the increasing concern with the societal implications of such processes. Whilst initial concern with the technical ability to ‘datafy’ and collect information on ever-more social activity focused on surveillance and privacy, increasing emphasis is being placed on the fact that data processes are not ‘flat’ and do not implicate everyone in the same way, but, rather, are part of a system of ‘social sorting’, creating new categories of citizens, and premised on an emerging order of ‘have’ and ‘have nots’ between data profilers and data subjects. In such a context, questions of social justice and datafication require detailed study. This project frames this research agenda around the notion of ‘data justice’. It will provide a European framework of study and take a holistic approach by situating research on data processes in the context of a) the concrete experiences and practices of particular communities; b) technological analyses of data sources, algorithmic process and data output; c) policy frameworks that relate to the interplay between digital rights and social and economic rights; and d) conceptual engagement with new social stratifications emerging with datafication. The project is ground-breaking in five different respects: i) it conceptually advances the meaning of social justice in a datafied society; ii) it shifts and challenges dominant understandings of data by highlighting its relation to social and economic rights; iii) it addresses an uncharted but rapidly growing response to datafication in civil society; iv) it breaks down disciplinary boundaries in understandings of technology, power, politics and social change; and v) it pursues a combination of engaged research and socio-technical modes of investigation.

Max ERC Funding

1 383 920 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-01-01, End date: 2022-12-31

Project acronymDATAJUSTICE

ProjectGlobal data justice in the era of big data: toward an inclusive framing of informational rights and freedoms

Researcher (PI)Linnet Taylor TAYLOR

Host Institution (HI)STICHTING KATHOLIEKE UNIVERSITEIT BRABANT

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH2, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryThe increasing adoption of digital technologies worldwide creates data flows from places and populations that were previously digitally invisible. The resulting ‘data revolution’ is hailed as a transformative tool for human and economic development. Yet the revolution is primarily a technical one: the power to monitor, sort and intervene is not yet connected to a social justice agenda, nor have the organisations involved addressed the discriminatory potential of data technologies. Instead, the assumption is that the power to visualise and monitor will inevitably benefit the poor and marginalised.
This research proposes that a conceptualisation of data justice is necessary to determine ethical paths through a datafying world. Its two main aims are: first, to provide the first critical assessment of the case for, and the obstacles to, data justice as an overall framework for data technologies’ design and governance. Second, to present a conceptual framework for data justice, refining it through public debate.
The project will develop an interdisciplinary approach integrating critical data studies with development studies and legal philosophy. Using Sen's Capabilities Approach, it will conceptualise data justice along three dimensions of freedoms: (in)visibility, digital (dis)engagement, and nondiscrimination. Multi-sited ethnography in combination with digital methods will be used to build a conceptual framework, which will then be tested and shaped by debates held in nine locations worldwide.
The research is groundbreaking in terms of 1) its use of the Capabilities Approach to address the social impacts of data technologies; 2) its integrative approach to problems previously addressed by the fields of law, informatics and development studies, and 3) its aim to reconcile negative with positive technologically-enabled freedoms, integrating data privacy, nondiscrimination and non-use of data technologies into the same framework as representation and access to data.

The increasing adoption of digital technologies worldwide creates data flows from places and populations that were previously digitally invisible. The resulting ‘data revolution’ is hailed as a transformative tool for human and economic development. Yet the revolution is primarily a technical one: the power to monitor, sort and intervene is not yet connected to a social justice agenda, nor have the organisations involved addressed the discriminatory potential of data technologies. Instead, the assumption is that the power to visualise and monitor will inevitably benefit the poor and marginalised.
This research proposes that a conceptualisation of data justice is necessary to determine ethical paths through a datafying world. Its two main aims are: first, to provide the first critical assessment of the case for, and the obstacles to, data justice as an overall framework for data technologies’ design and governance. Second, to present a conceptual framework for data justice, refining it through public debate.
The project will develop an interdisciplinary approach integrating critical data studies with development studies and legal philosophy. Using Sen's Capabilities Approach, it will conceptualise data justice along three dimensions of freedoms: (in)visibility, digital (dis)engagement, and nondiscrimination. Multi-sited ethnography in combination with digital methods will be used to build a conceptual framework, which will then be tested and shaped by debates held in nine locations worldwide.
The research is groundbreaking in terms of 1) its use of the Capabilities Approach to address the social impacts of data technologies; 2) its integrative approach to problems previously addressed by the fields of law, informatics and development studies, and 3) its aim to reconcile negative with positive technologically-enabled freedoms, integrating data privacy, nondiscrimination and non-use of data technologies into the same framework as representation and access to data.

SummaryThe switch from parchment to paper had a fundamental impact on later medieval universities, equivalent to the shift to Open Access today, hindering some intellectual practices while encouraging others. The DEBATE project identifies a neglected genre of latin texts that flourished on paper, the Principia, which record the public confrontations between candidates (socii) for the title of doctor. These debates, imposed by university statutes throughout Europe as annual exercises linked to lectures on the Sentences (the medieval parallel to our PhD thesis), forced the candidate to reveal his innovative theories (sheets of papers were exchanged among the socii beforehand), display his erudition and prove his intellectual prowess before a large audience. The futuristic discussion usually exceeded the confines of one discipline and allowed the bachelor to indulge his interdisciplinary interests, employing science, theology, mathematics, politics, literature, and rhetoric in his polemics against his colleagues. Principia thus reveal the cutting edge method of fostering science in later medieval universities. The DEBATE team intends to identify new manuscripts, edit the texts, establish authorship for anonymous fragments and propose an interpretation that will help explain how innovation was a primordial target in medieval academia. Putting together all the surviving texts of Principia produced in various cultural contexts, this project will provide a wealth of material that will bring about a basic change in our understanding of the mechanism of the production of academic knowledge in the early universities all around Europe.The project is designed to promote erudition by combining a palaeographical, codicological, editorial and hermeneutical approach, aiming to open an advanced area of inquiry focusing on an intellectual practice that bound together medieval universities from different geographical and cultural regions: Paris, Bologna, Vienna, Prague, Krakow and Cologne.

The switch from parchment to paper had a fundamental impact on later medieval universities, equivalent to the shift to Open Access today, hindering some intellectual practices while encouraging others. The DEBATE project identifies a neglected genre of latin texts that flourished on paper, the Principia, which record the public confrontations between candidates (socii) for the title of doctor. These debates, imposed by university statutes throughout Europe as annual exercises linked to lectures on the Sentences (the medieval parallel to our PhD thesis), forced the candidate to reveal his innovative theories (sheets of papers were exchanged among the socii beforehand), display his erudition and prove his intellectual prowess before a large audience. The futuristic discussion usually exceeded the confines of one discipline and allowed the bachelor to indulge his interdisciplinary interests, employing science, theology, mathematics, politics, literature, and rhetoric in his polemics against his colleagues. Principia thus reveal the cutting edge method of fostering science in later medieval universities. The DEBATE team intends to identify new manuscripts, edit the texts, establish authorship for anonymous fragments and propose an interpretation that will help explain how innovation was a primordial target in medieval academia. Putting together all the surviving texts of Principia produced in various cultural contexts, this project will provide a wealth of material that will bring about a basic change in our understanding of the mechanism of the production of academic knowledge in the early universities all around Europe.The project is designed to promote erudition by combining a palaeographical, codicological, editorial and hermeneutical approach, aiming to open an advanced area of inquiry focusing on an intellectual practice that bound together medieval universities from different geographical and cultural regions: Paris, Bologna, Vienna, Prague, Krakow and Cologne.

Max ERC Funding

1 997 976 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-08-01, End date: 2023-07-31

Project acronymDenCity

ProjectDensity assemblages: intensity and the city in a global urban age

Researcher (PI)Colin MCFARLANE

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM

Call DetailsConsolidator Grant (CoG), SH2, ERC-2017-COG

SummaryDenCity offers a new approach for understanding density and its relationship to the city. Density is a defining feature of the city and urban life. Across the world, density is now at the centre of policy and planning agendas to build cities that are environmentally, economically, socially and politically ‘sustainable’. While there is a lively tradition of research on density in the city, we lack an understanding of the different ways in which high densities are lived and perceived by residents. Existing research provides rich resources for how we might define and represent density, how we might arrive at optimum numbers of people in a given area, and how capitalism builds or reduces densities within and between places globally. However, we lack an understanding of how high density – what I call intensity – is understood and experienced by different urban inhabitants, and the implications for how we understand the contemporary city. Developing a ‘density assemblage’ approach, I propose to examine the ways in which residents differently know and relate to intensity, including how it comes to matter, for good or ill. I do so by examining different cases of intensity in the Asian city, from travel and transport hubs, and slums to rooftops. While the 20th century witnessed a general global decrease of urban density in favour of urban sprawl, many Asian cities continue to densify. Asia is the densest and most urbanized part of the planet, and the trend is predicted to continue. I will examine some of the highest densities in the world, including in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Manila, Dhaka, and Tokyo. The different ways in which intensity becomes known and comes to matter for residents will be a vital challenge for understanding life in the urban 21st century, and for how we understand the city.

DenCity offers a new approach for understanding density and its relationship to the city. Density is a defining feature of the city and urban life. Across the world, density is now at the centre of policy and planning agendas to build cities that are environmentally, economically, socially and politically ‘sustainable’. While there is a lively tradition of research on density in the city, we lack an understanding of the different ways in which high densities are lived and perceived by residents. Existing research provides rich resources for how we might define and represent density, how we might arrive at optimum numbers of people in a given area, and how capitalism builds or reduces densities within and between places globally. However, we lack an understanding of how high density – what I call intensity – is understood and experienced by different urban inhabitants, and the implications for how we understand the contemporary city. Developing a ‘density assemblage’ approach, I propose to examine the ways in which residents differently know and relate to intensity, including how it comes to matter, for good or ill. I do so by examining different cases of intensity in the Asian city, from travel and transport hubs, and slums to rooftops. While the 20th century witnessed a general global decrease of urban density in favour of urban sprawl, many Asian cities continue to densify. Asia is the densest and most urbanized part of the planet, and the trend is predicted to continue. I will examine some of the highest densities in the world, including in Hong Kong, Mumbai, Manila, Dhaka, and Tokyo. The different ways in which intensity becomes known and comes to matter for residents will be a vital challenge for understanding life in the urban 21st century, and for how we understand the city.

Max ERC Funding

1 344 681 €

Duration

Start date: 2018-09-01, End date: 2022-08-31

Project acronymDesert Networks

ProjectInto the Eastern Desert of Egypt from the New Kingdom to the Roman period

SummaryThe desert is a paradox: it is at the same time arid and rich in resources, a margin and an interface. Far from being a no man’s land, it is a social space of linked solidarities. The “Desert Networks” project aims to explore the reticular organisation of such a zone by focusing on the southern part of the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Located between the Nile and the Red Sea, it has always been a tantalizing region for Egypt and beyond. Its ancient remains are admirably preserved and ancient sources about and from the region itself are numerous. Yet, the history of its occupation and appropriation remains a static and compartmentalized one. Therefore, the ambition of the project is to cross disciplinary borders and achieve an epistemological break by working for the first time in and on the Eastern desert as a dynamic object, both from a long-term perspective (mid-second millennium BC - late third century AD), and by analysing the patterns and functions of the different networks that linked its various nodes using the connectivity theory that reshaped scholarly paradigms for the Mediterranean in the 2000s. As the head of the French Eastern Desert mission, the PI will co-ordinate a multidisciplinary team. For the first time, the project will gather all the data unearthed in the region over 300 years, as well as the expected data from the excavations conducted by the project, in a database linked with a GIS. A collaborative and online open access map of the Eastern Desert will be created and will serve for the spatial analyses and rendering of the real, economic and social networks in the area. These networks evolved over time and through a shifting geography, as people experienced different perceptions of space. By assessing all these facets and confronting the archaeological material and written evidence, our final objective is to write a new history of the Eastern Desert from Pharaonic to Roman times, focusing on its networks and evaluating their meaning.

The desert is a paradox: it is at the same time arid and rich in resources, a margin and an interface. Far from being a no man’s land, it is a social space of linked solidarities. The “Desert Networks” project aims to explore the reticular organisation of such a zone by focusing on the southern part of the Eastern Desert of Egypt. Located between the Nile and the Red Sea, it has always been a tantalizing region for Egypt and beyond. Its ancient remains are admirably preserved and ancient sources about and from the region itself are numerous. Yet, the history of its occupation and appropriation remains a static and compartmentalized one. Therefore, the ambition of the project is to cross disciplinary borders and achieve an epistemological break by working for the first time in and on the Eastern desert as a dynamic object, both from a long-term perspective (mid-second millennium BC - late third century AD), and by analysing the patterns and functions of the different networks that linked its various nodes using the connectivity theory that reshaped scholarly paradigms for the Mediterranean in the 2000s. As the head of the French Eastern Desert mission, the PI will co-ordinate a multidisciplinary team. For the first time, the project will gather all the data unearthed in the region over 300 years, as well as the expected data from the excavations conducted by the project, in a database linked with a GIS. A collaborative and online open access map of the Eastern Desert will be created and will serve for the spatial analyses and rendering of the real, economic and social networks in the area. These networks evolved over time and through a shifting geography, as people experienced different perceptions of space. By assessing all these facets and confronting the archaeological material and written evidence, our final objective is to write a new history of the Eastern Desert from Pharaonic to Roman times, focusing on its networks and evaluating their meaning.

Max ERC Funding

1 499 844 €

Duration

Start date: 2017-11-01, End date: 2022-10-31

Project acronymDEVTAXNET

ProjectTax Evasion in Developing Countries. The Role of Firm Networks

Researcher (PI)Dina Deborah POMERANZ

Host Institution (HI)UNIVERSITAT ZURICH

Call DetailsStarting Grant (StG), SH1, ERC-2017-STG

SummaryTax evasion leads to billions of Euros of losses in government revenue around the world. This does not only affect public budgets, but can also create large distortions between activities that are fully taxed and others that escape taxation through evasion. These issues are particularly severe in developing countries, where evasion is especially high and governments struggle to raise funds for basic services and infrastructure, while at the same time trying to grow independent of international aid.
It is widely suspected that some of the most common and difficult to detect forms of evasion involve interactions across firm networks. However, due to severe data limitations, the existing literature has mostly considered taxpayers as isolated units. Empirical evidence on tax compliance in firm networks is extremely sparse.
This proposal describes 3 Sub-Projects to fill this gap. They are made possible thanks to access I have obtained -through five years of prior research and policy engagement– to unique datasets from Chile and Ecuador on both the networks of supply chains and of joint ownership structures.
The first Sub-Project focuses on international firm networks. It aims to analyze profit shifting of multinational firms to low tax jurisdictions, exploiting a natural experiment in Chile that strongly increased monitoring of international tax norms.
The second Sub-Project investigates the analogous issue at the intranational level: profit shifting and tax collusion in networks of firms within the same country. Despite much anecdotal evidence, this behavior has received little rigorous empirical scrutiny.
The final Sub-Project is situated at the nexus between international and national firms. It seeks to estimate a novel form of spillovers of FDI: the impact on tax compliance of local trading partners of foreign-owned firms.
DEVTAXNET will provide new insights about the role of firm networks for tax evasion that are valuable to academics and policy makers alike.

Tax evasion leads to billions of Euros of losses in government revenue around the world. This does not only affect public budgets, but can also create large distortions between activities that are fully taxed and others that escape taxation through evasion. These issues are particularly severe in developing countries, where evasion is especially high and governments struggle to raise funds for basic services and infrastructure, while at the same time trying to grow independent of international aid.
It is widely suspected that some of the most common and difficult to detect forms of evasion involve interactions across firm networks. However, due to severe data limitations, the existing literature has mostly considered taxpayers as isolated units. Empirical evidence on tax compliance in firm networks is extremely sparse.
This proposal describes 3 Sub-Projects to fill this gap. They are made possible thanks to access I have obtained -through five years of prior research and policy engagement– to unique datasets from Chile and Ecuador on both the networks of supply chains and of joint ownership structures.
The first Sub-Project focuses on international firm networks. It aims to analyze profit shifting of multinational firms to low tax jurisdictions, exploiting a natural experiment in Chile that strongly increased monitoring of international tax norms.
The second Sub-Project investigates the analogous issue at the intranational level: profit shifting and tax collusion in networks of firms within the same country. Despite much anecdotal evidence, this behavior has received little rigorous empirical scrutiny.
The final Sub-Project is situated at the nexus between international and national firms. It seeks to estimate a novel form of spillovers of FDI: the impact on tax compliance of local trading partners of foreign-owned firms.
DEVTAXNET will provide new insights about the role of firm networks for tax evasion that are valuable to academics and policy makers alike.